Eighth Air Force Research Articles

Book Review: Bomb Group: The Eighth Air Force’s 381st and the Allied Air Offensive Over Europe by Paul Bingley and Mike Peters

Book Review: Bomb Group: The Eighth Air Force’s 381st and the Allied Air Offensive Over Europe by Paul Bingley and Mike Peters

The Meaning of the Liar Paradox in Randall Jarrell's "Eighth Air Force"

The Meaning of the Liar Paradox in Randall Jarrell's "Eighth Air Force"

Paving the Way for Victory: The Eighth Air Force Airfield Construction Program

U.S. bombers helped win World War II, but getting them off the ground took a concerted effort between American and British engineers to build dozens of airfields across England in a few short years.

Learning to Fight and Fighting to Learn: Practitioners and the Role of Unit Publications in VIII Fighter Command 1943–1944

ABSTRACTA military cannot hope to improve in wartime if it cannot learn. Ideally, in wartime, formal learning ceases and the application of knowledge begins. But this is optimistic. In 1942, USAAF Eighth Air Force assumed it had the means necessary for victory. In reality, its technique and technology were only potentially – rather than actually – effective. What remained was to create the practice of daylight bombing – to learn. This article (1) recovers a wartime learning process that created new knowledge, (2) tests existing tacit hypotheses in military adaptation research, and (3) offers additional theoretical foundation to explain how knowledge is created in wartime

And That’s the Way it No Longer Is

And That’s the Way it No Longer Is Thomas Doherty (bio) Douglas Brinkley. Cronkite. New York: HarperCollins, 2012. 819pages. Illustrated, bibliographical glossary, notes, and index. $34.99. “I was sitting home alone one night/ in L.A./watching old Cronkite on the seven o’ clock news,” crooned Bob Dylan (“Black Diamond Bay,” 1976) in one of the many pop-cult shout-outs to the mustached face of American television news during that bygone age of three-network hegemony. Likewise, in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 (1995), when the NASA astronauts gather at the home of Jim Lovell to watch the moon landing on television, no channel surfing will be permitted: the Great White Father of the airwaves, everybody’s Uncle Walter, is the choice by acclamation. The popular historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University and himself a regular talking head on television, gives full biographical treatment to the most firmly anchored of video anchormen. Cronkite hosted The CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, sitting comfortably atop the Nielsen ratings for most of the run, before reluctantly turning over the desk to former protégé and future bête noir Dan Rather). Even for viewers too young to remember, Cronkite’s visage will be a permanent archival accessory for much of the history of the era he reported on. In Brinkley’s telling, he is more than a bearer of tidings; he shaped the course of American history. The sheer size and bulk of this doorstop of a tome is both a testimony to Cronkite’s longevity and a bid to place him shoulder to shoulder on the bookshelf alongside the thick volumes lauding Edward R. Murrow, the glamorous patron saint of broadcast journalism. Brinkley sees his subject as nothing less than “the preeminent television newsman of the twentieth century” (pp. 547–48)—although, as with any CBS-centric story, Murrow hovers just out of camera range, never quite exorcised from the control room. Born in 1916 in St. Joseph’s, Missouri, and reared in Kansas City, Missouri, and Houston, Texas, Cronkite was the only son of an alcoholic, underachieving father and a feisty, self-reliant mother. An indifferent student at the University of Texas, he found his footing working on school newspapers, small-town dailies, and upstart radio stations. In 1937, as a wire-service reporter for the United Press (UP) syndicate, he got his first big exposure in the national press [End Page 728] by reporting on the horrific gas explosion at a public school in New London, Texas, that killed 295 people, most of them children. “The passerby heard men weep, heard rasp-like voices oddly strained in unaccustomed efforts to be tender,” read his terse, Hemingwayesque wire copy. Decades later, Cronkite still called the New London tragedy “his most memorable reporting assignment” (p. 58). Brinkley is exceptionally good at showing how the crucible of Cronkite’s apprenticeship as a hard-charging, fact checking “Unipresser” forged his journalistic sensibility ever after. The book starts to kick in when the eager-beaver young journalist grabs the brass ring as a foreign correspondent for United Press in London during World War II. As a charter member of the legendary band of ink-stained brothers dubbed “the Writing Sixty-Ninth,” he pumped out patriotic puff pieces on the gallant boys of the Eighth Air Force, accompanied B-17 crews on bombing missions over Germany, and drank too much. UP marketed the Cronkite brand, boldfacing his byline and hyping their intrepid journalist as “Dean of the Air War.” During this time, Cronkite also began in a serious way to cultivate his radio chops. “With his firm, clear, and penetrative voice, Cronkite sounded distinguished on radio,” observes Brinkley. “He had a genius for accentuating syllables in a compelling way” (pp. 104–5). Hearing a voice of the future, Murrow tried to recruit him into the ranks of his soon-to-be legendary “boys.” Amazingly, Cronkite turned him down. Later, at CBS, he would say semi-jokingly that he belonged to the “Murrow-Ain’t-God-Club,” a sentiment tantamount to heresy in the corridors of Black Rock. Nonetheless, he nicked his famous sign-off (“. . . and that’s...

Sorting Facts; or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker

* the FACTORY OF FACTS * Filming facts. Sorting facts. Disseminating facts. Agitating with facts. Propaganda with Facts. Fists made of facts. * Lightning flashes of facts. * Mountains of facts. * Hurricanes of facts. * And individual little factlets. * Against film-sorcery. * Against film-mystification. * For the genuine cinematification of the worker-peasant. USSR. -Dziga Vertov, 1926 I was asked to contribute to this collection of essays because of a book I once wrote about Emily Dickinson's poetry. Although this seemed a strange reason to assume I could write about nonfiction film, I was drawn to the project because of the fact of my husband's death and my wish to find a way to document his life and work. David von Schlegell was a second-generation American with a German name. He was born in St. Louis in 1920. His German name embarrassed him, especially the von, but he didn't change it, maybe because he was an only child. The family moved east shortly after his birth when his father got a job teaching painting at the Art Students League in New York City. His mother's first name was Alice, but people called her Bae (pronounced Bay). She also drew and painted. The three of them loved the Atlantic Ocean, especially the Maine coast at Ogunquit where they spent each summer. As a boy, David designed sailboats. When he was in his teens he built his own and called it Stormy. He hoped to become a yacht designer or an architect, but he was young and healthy enough to be cannon fodder, so from 1943 to 1945 he served as a bomber pilot and armament- systems officer in the Eighth Air Force. Until he died and was cremated he had a large scar on his leftarm from where he was shot while piloting a B-17 in the fiery skies over Emden in Germany. The bullet shattered his wrist, but he managed to bring the bomber back to home base in England. Three other crew members were wounded also. It could be said this wound just above his lefthand saved his life, because he was hospitalized for several months and then honorably discharged. But the war wounded him in ways he could never recover. After the war he studied painting with his father at the Art Students League. He painted for many years, then switched suddenly to sculpture. He was a shy person. His art was influenced by Russian Constructivism and various American boat designers. He worked in wood, steel, and aluminum, and usually built his own pieces. His best-known sculptures were designed in the 1960s and early 1970s. I didn't meet him until 1965 when he was forty-five and I already loved his sculpture. We lived together for twenty-seven years, most of them by Long Island Sound. Toward the end of his life he had to stop sailing because of severe arthritis in his knees, but he could still row. I liked to watch how he feathered the oars to glide back. Little whirlpools formed where the oar blades tipped under: their entry clean as their exit. These are only some facts. He had a stroke and died three days later on Monday, October 5, 1992, at 5 a.m. Those last days in the hospital were a horror. He was fully conscious, but words failed. He couldn't speak or write. He tried to communicate by gestures. We couldn't interpret them. He kept making the gesture of pointing. In physical space we couldn't see what he saw. He couldn't guide a pencil or form a coherent signal. Francois Truffaut says that for a filmmaker the basic problem is how to express oneself by purely means. The same could be said for a sculptor, except that for two days and three nights in the hospital I don't think David saw what visual means meant. Without words what are facts? His eyes seemed to know. His hand squeezed mine. What did he mean? In my writing, I have often explored ideas of what constitutes an official version of events as opposed to a former version in imminent danger of being lost. Sorting word-facts I only know an apparition. …

The Bombing of Germany. Dir. and prod. by Zvi Dor-Ner. wgbh for the American Experience, 2010. 90 mins. (pbs Home Video, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/bombing/)

The eminent historian Richard Overy once observed: “The most striking moral paradox of the war years was the willingness of ostensibly liberal states to engage in the deliberate killing of hundreds of thousands of enemy civilians from the air” (Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, 1995, p. 296). The Bombing of Germany represents another entry in a field of works on this “moral paradox,” ranging from such recognized classics as Overy's book The Air War, 1939–1945 (1980) to the recent volume Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany (2008) by Randall Hansen. The film begins by highlighting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's plea on September 1, 1939, for all belligerents to eschew bombing civilians. It then vaults to August 1942 when the U.S. Eighth Air Force, destined to be the premier American strategic bombing command in Europe, commenced operations from England. The leaders of the force proclaimed that they...

The Jet Race and the Second World War (review)

Reviewed by: The Jet Race and the Second World War Kenneth P. Werrell The Jet Race and the Second World War. By Sterling Michael Pavelec . Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security International, 2007. ISBN 978-0-275-99355-9. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 227. $49.95. One of the fascinating "what might have beens" of World War II is the German development of jet and rocket aircraft and their use in the conflict. The Jet Race and the Second World War describes the simultaneous development of the jet engine in Britain and Germany and how the Germans won the race to first fly and first employ jet and rocket aircraft in combat. Author S. Michael Pavelec goes on to discuss the jet's employment and the tardy Anglo-American response. He states that the Germans achieved success, a judgment based on German firsts, not the impact of these aircraft on the war. The author notes that few of the 1,600 jet and rocket aircraft saw combat and that two thirds of the Me 262s were lost in accidents. (The latter says much about the state of jet technology, German training, and the competence of German airforce (GAF) pilots at this point in the war.) Using secondary sources, he writes that the GAF claimed 446 Allied aircraft destroyed at the cost of 190 Me 262s. As might be expected, this figure is in sharp contrast to the claims of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, the principal opponent of the jets, that its aircraft destroyed 205 jet and rocket fighters for the loss of 69 bombers and fighters. (This again raises the seemingly irresolvable issue of conflicting aerial claims.) Regardless, the newest technology did not win the air war, instead victory was won by overwhelming numbers and (on average) better trained fighter pilots. Pavelec argues that the lack of key raw materials doomed the GAF jet and rocket aircraft. There are other explanations for the program's failure, the most convincing of which is its immature technology. Rocket engines lacked endurance and were dangerous to both air and ground crews while [End Page 280] the early jets suffered from slow acceleration and poor reliability. Regardless, considering German problems and Allied advantages, it is far fetched to believe that jets alone could have provided a "silver bullet" for Germany to avoid defeat. (Even if the Allied air offensive was neutralized, it would not have stopped the ground offensives from crushing Germany in the last year of the war.) Like the V-weapons, jets were spectacular, futuristic, but of no consequence in the war. As Bomber Harris noted, "it is just as essential not to use the unready weapons of the next war as it is not to use the outclassed weapons of the last" (Bomber Offensive, 32). GAF jets did not come too late, they came too early. Unfortunately, The Jet Race shares many of the typical problems of dissertations transformed into books. Pavelec was not well served by the system (his dissertation advisors, reviewers, and editors) who failed to smooth out these difficulties. This book is too detailed for all but those interested in engine engineering. The context provided goes beyond the focus of this study, diffuses the book, and allows errors and questionable assertions that are outside the topic to unnecessarily intrude on it. While the prose is adequate, there are numerous redundant passages. And despite the considerable depth and breadth of sources, the author inexplicitly failed to employ the USAF Historical Research Agency. This may explain why America's first combat jet, the Lockheed P-80, does not receive its due and the treatment of combat employment is sparse. (Lockheed files are unavailable to the public.) At points there appears to be an over reliance on secondary sources. The Jet Race is a solid study of jet engines, detailed and well documented. While a contribution as such, it fails to extend effectively beyond this narrow topic. It is also a case study in how not to turn a dissertation into a book. For Pavelec was unable to overcome the limitations of that genre, to place his subject into a larger, more significant context, and reach an audience...

The Reconstruction of Warriors: Archibald McIndoe, the Royal Air Force, and the Guinea Pig Club (review)

Reviewed by: The Reconstruction of Warriors: Archibald McIndoe, the Royal Air Force, and the Guinea Pig Club Edgar Jones The Reconstruction of Warriors: Archibald McIndoe, the Royal Air Force, and the Guinea Pig Club. By E. R. Mayhew. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2004. ISBN 1-85367-610-1. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 239. $34.95. This is a carefully researched and well-written analysis of how plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe turned East Grinstead Cottage Hospital into a centre of excellence for the treatment of burns during the Second World War. As a civilian consultant to the Royal Air Force, the charismatic McIndoe was referred increasing numbers of horribly burned pilots from the Battle of Britain. In a short time he reversed medical orthodoxy and built up an impressive team of doctors and nurses, training juniors who then practised elsewhere in the U.K. Mayhew documents how he successfully campaigned [End Page 262] against coagulation therapy (the use of tannic acid to seal burned tissue) and returned to more labour intensive methods involving saline baths, gauze dressings and Vaseline jelly to promote both healing and the creation of a suitable grafting surface. The preeminence achieved by McIndoe echoed that of his uncle Harold Gillies who had treated soldiers mutilated by shellfire at the Queen's Hospital, Sidcup, during the First World War. Driven by the need to return airmen to some form of purposeful life, this study shows how war accelerated the techniques of plastic surgery, though possibly to the detriment of other hospitals or disciplines denied such resources; it also shows the power of specialisation. It is perhaps more than a coincidence that each World War produced in the U.K. a plastic surgeon of determination, independence of thought, and dedication. Indeed, McIndoe, Gillies, and David Charters (who accomplished similar medical miracles in a German POW camp) all had an ambivalent view towards authority and almost, of necessity, had dominant personalities. However, this is far from being just a medical history, and the aviation context in which aircrew fought and became casualties is explored. In 1939, the Air Ministry decided against installing self-sealing tanks in Hurricane and Spitfire fighter aircraft because of the additional weight and consequent loss of fuel capacity, thereby reducing its ability to engage the enemy. This policy inevitably meant that pilots would be horribly burned as the main tank in the Spitfire was located behind the engine and in front of the control panel. The calculation had perhaps failed to account for the time it took for burned patients to recover and the general effect on the morale of aircrew who knew that they were exposed to such frightening risks. Mayhew destroys the popular myth that burned aircrew were largely fighter pilots from the Battle of Britain and demonstrates that from 1941 onwards the vast majority were bomber crew. By the end of the war, for example, 80 per cent of the Guinea Pig Club had served in bombers. Although the Canadian Wing at East Grinstead is carefully analysed, no mention is made of the therapeutic regime practised by the American Eighth Air Force engaged in daylight raids over Germany. Although important clues are given, there is little overt analysis of the psychology of either aircrew or the medical staff who nursed them. It is difficult to imagine an injury more designed to cause psychiatric trauma than severe burns to the face and hands. It would have been interesting to know how many, if any, of these pilots became depressed or even suicidal and whether the RAF deployed liaison psychiatrists to East Grinstead. The Guinea Pig Club and its magazine undoubtedly provided an essential comradeship and a sense of shared adversity, while McIndoe's own personality served as an inspiration, stating in 1958 that "throughout the surgical period and for long after it the patient will lean heavily on the surgeon for mental support, for hope and encouragement." The part played by the citizens of East Grinstead in creating an environment in which horribly disfigured airmen could begin to adjust to their wounds and reintroduce themselves to society outside a hospital ward is well described. This open-minded [End Page 263] approach contrasted...

Doolittle: Aerospace Visionary (review)

Reviewed by: Doolittle: Aerospace Visionary Kenneth P. Werrell Doolittle: Aerospace Visionary. By Dik Daso. Washington: Potomac Books, 2003. ISBN 1-57488-669-X. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliographic note. Index. Pp. xv, 140. $12.95. Jimmy Doolittle is one of the giants of aviation, famous for a number of reasons. He was very successful in several careers: a top notch stunt, test, and racing pilot; an oil executive who pushed the higher octane gasoline that would give the Allies an edge in World War II; one of the first American heroes of that war as the leader of the initial air attack on Tokyo; a notable aviation engineer; and a wartime commander of the Eighth Air Force, the Army Air Force's largest numbered air force. Doolittle was also a colorful character who rose to three-star rank, a considerable feat for a non–West Pointer. Little wonder, then, that more books have been written about him than other aviation figures, with the possible exception of the Wright brothers. Dik Daso is well qualified to add yet another volume to this list by virtue of his academic and flying background, current position as curator at the Air and Space Museum, and previous biographies of two other major American aviation figures, Henry "Hap" Arnold and Theodore von Kármán. His training, experience, and talents are evident in this effort. Doolittle is a brief survey, 114 pages of text in a small format (less than 5 by 8 inches) in the Potomac series on military figures, the first on an airman. Daso is a skillful writer who covers his subject well. This effort is supported by documentation that indicates use of many secondary works and [End Page 265] interviews. Daso deserves high grades for condensing such a long, broad, and multi-faceted life into this small and readable format, all within the context of the numerous events which took place during the rapid growth of aviation in the decades following World War I and the air war in World War II. This brief treatment will leave some readers lusting for more detail on a variety of subjects. From the outset Daso candidly admits that a new, critical study of Doolittle is needed, and that his concise overview is only an introduction. But for many, less may be better. Nevertheless, Daso highlights two elements that elude most other writers. First, Doolittle was a lucky individual who survived a number of aircraft accidents (seven by my count). He was an excellent pilot, but he pushed the limits, sometimes unwisely, getting into situations that killed others. Second, Doolittle had a firm grasp on his place in history. The author notes that when asked to name his greatest contribution to aviation, Doolittle answered that it was his work with blind (bad weather) flying experiments. (Doolittle explained to this writer that, unlike his other accomplishments which he believed could have been performed by others, only he had the technical/scientific background and pilot skills to accomplish the blind flying feats.) Dik Daso has done an excellent job in presenting an easy to read, brief, scholarly, balanced, and surprisingly complete overview of this notable individual. He raises more questions than he answers, but that is the nature of the survey genre. This effort should encourage him, or another biographer, to write the detailed, scholarly study that would flesh out the life and career of Jimmy Doolittle. For despite all that has been written on this man and his accomplishments, such a work would not only be welcomed, it is needed. Kenneth P. Werrell Christiansburg, Virginia Copyright © 2006 Society for Military History

Operations Analysis in the Eighth Air Force, 1942–1945 -- Four Contemporary Accounts

Operations Analysis in the Eighth Air Force, 1942–1945 -- Four Contemporary Accounts

Operations Analysis in the Eighth Air Force, 1942-1945 Four Contemporary Accounts.

Operations Analysis in the Eighth Air Force, 1942-1945 Four Contemporary Accounts.

Book Reviews

Botha, Sally; Gryffenberg, Ivan; Hofmeyr, Rauten; Lausberg, Jean; Nicolay, Rupert; Smit, Willem; Uys, Stefanus; Van der Merwe, Willie; and Wessels, Gys 1996, Guns or Butter: Decision Support for Determining the Size and Shape of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF), No. 96.01, 1/2” VHS: $125 PAL: $85—reviewed by Frederic H. Murphy. Curnow, George; Kochman, Gary; Meester, Steven; Sarkar, Debashish; and Wilton, Keith 1996, Credit and Collections Decision Automation in AT&T Capital's Small-Ticket Business, No. 96.03, 1/2” VHS: $125, PAL: $85—reviewed by Frederic H. Murphy. Carr-Hill, Roy; Hardman, Geoffrey; Martin, Stephen; Peacock, Stuart; Sheldon, Trevor; and Smith, Peter 1996, A New Formula for Distributing Hospital Funds in England, No. 96.04, 1/2” VHS: $125, PAL: $85—reviewed by Frederic H. Murphy. Golabi, Kamal and Shepard, Richard 1996, PONTIS: A System for Maintenance Optimization and Improvement of US Bridge Networks, No. 96-07, 1/2” VHS: $125, PAL: $85—reviewed by Frederic H. Murphy. Eliman, Abdilghani A.; Girgis, Maurice; and Kotob, Samir 1996, The Use of Linear Programming in Disentangling and Bankruptcies of al-Manakh Stock Market Crash, No. 96-02, 1/2” VHS: $125, PAL: $85—reviewed by Frederic H. Murphy. Geraghty, M. Kevin and Johnston, Ernest 1996, Revenue Management Program at National Car Rental, No. 96.05, 1/2” VHS: $125, PAL: $85—reviewed by Frederic H. Murphy. Camm, Jeffrey; Chorman, Thomas; Dill, Franz; Evans, James; and Sweeney, Dennis 1996, North American Product Supply Restructuring at Procter & Gamble, No. 96.06, 1/2” VHS: $125, PAL: $85—reviewed by Frederic H. Murphy. Camm, J. P. and Evans, J. R. 1996, Management Science: Modeling, Analysis and Interpretation, South-Western, Cincinnati, Ohio, 865 pp., $48.00—reviewed by Ron Craig. Jarrow, R. A.; Maksimovic, V.; and Ziemba, W. T., eds. 1995, Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science, Vol. 9: Finance, North-Holland, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1,165 pp., $165.00—reviewed by Mark Kaiser. Vose, David 1996, Quantitative Risk Analysis: A Guide to Monte Carlo Simulation Modeling, John Wiley and Sons Ltd., West Sussex, England, 328 pp., $65.00—reviewed by Geoffrey C. Scott. Rivett, Patrick 1994, The Craft of Decision Modelling, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, England, and New York, viii + 304 pp., $45.95—reviewed by Hugh J. Miser. Fortuin, Leonard; Van Beek, Paul; and Van Wassenhove, Luk, eds. 1996, OR at Work: Practical Experiences of Operational Research, Taylor and Francis, Bristol, Pennsylvania, 359 pp., $39.95—reviewed by Belarmino Adenso-Díaz. Miser, Hugh J., ed. 1997, Operations Analysis in the Eighth Air Force, 1942–1945: Four Contemporary Accounts, INFORMS, Linthicum, Maryland, 296 pp., $20.00—reviewed by Alan Rimm-Kaufman.

Eighth Air Force Bibliography: An Extended Essay and Listing of Published and Unpublished Materials Updated and Revised.

Eighth Air Force Bibliography: An Extended Essay and Listing of Published and Unpublished Materials Updated and Revised.

Building the B-29 by Jacob Vander Meulen, and: Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War by Mark K. Wells

788 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE renz and others demonstrated in the 1970s that the atmosphere is a chaotic system whose behavior is all too sensitive to small variations in initial conditions. Once again, Nebeker points out, the refractory nature of meteorology stimulated mathematical innovation. Except for a few pages showing the results of archival research in the papers of von Neumann and Charney, Nebeker exploits only published sources. There is ample material among these, however, including numerous retrospective and review articles by meteorolo­ gists, for a first survey of an uncharted area. The author takes care to explain most technical concepts, though occasionally he falters: readers outside of meteorology would appreciate, for example, an explanation of the significance of the 500 mb surface. Otherwise the book reads well and offers convincing suggestions of the ways in which institutional and military factors directed meteorology to­ ward computational approaches. Calculating the Weather is a wel­ come addition to a field still largely neglected by historians of sci­ ence. Theodore S. Feldman Dr. Feldman studies the history of meteorology in the early modern period and is currently preparing a book on the idea of climate in the Enlightenment. BuildingtheB-29. Byjacob Vander Meulen. Washington, D.C.: Smith­ sonian Institution Press, 1995. Pp. 128; illustrations, figures, bibli­ ography. $18.95 (cloth). Courage and Air Warfare: TheAlliedAircrewExperience in the Second World War. By Mark K. Wells. London: Frank Cass, 1995. Pp. xv+240; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00 (cloth) $22.50 (paper). Human factors are often the key to successful deployment of mili­ tary technology in wartime. These two titles take a look at such fac­ tors from two different perspectives. Mark Wells’s Courage and Air Warfare analyzes operational functions; Jacob Vander Meulen’s Building the B-29 considers the manufacturing process. Mark Wells, a United States Air Force colonel, amassed some 2,400 flight hours and acquired a Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s Col­ lege, University of London; he currently teaches history at the Air Force Academy. He uses a comparative method to assess the experi­ ence of the U.S. Eighth Air Force and the RAF’s Bomber Command over Europe in World War II. Both air arms had a common goal, but applied different approaches in terms of crew selection, combat assignments, and responses to wartime stress. In the RAF, aircrew who experienced severe combat fatigue and were unable to fly on combat missions were declared to have “Lack of Moral Fiber” TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 789 (LMF) and assigned to a variety of nonflying tasks. Such reassign­ ments were clearly seen as punitive, and the stigma of LMF stamped on one’s personnel file often contributed to a lifetime of guilt and resentment. Using obscure medical records and impressive research techniques, Wells effectively compares the British practice with the American approach, which was more inclined to psychological treat­ ment and rehabilitation. Still, both services experienced roughly the same number of emotional casualties. This is a sensitive, informative study. Jacob Vander Meulen, professor of history at Dalhousie Univer­ sity, has written on the politics of aircraft production and various aspects of labor relations. In this brief but engrossing book, he fo­ cuses on the remarkable story of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. This was one of the first airplane production efforts to effectively employ a style later tagged as “concurrency,” in which construction offacto­ ries and specialized tooling began as the plane progressed through preliminary design and early test phases. By the time the B-29 was cleared for production, an elaborate system of subcontractors and new fabrication facilities was already in place. Vander Meulen also describes the incredibly diverse work force recruited for B-29 pro­ duction lines, employing seamstresses, filling station attendants, cocktail waitresses, farmhands, and others. All had to be trained in esoteric production tasks for hydraulic lines, fuel gauges, electronic gun sights, and huge slabs of aluminum skin—the myriad compo­ nents for one ofthe most sophisticated military machines of the war. Many components were designed so as to be more producible by the masses of unskilled workers on B-29 assembly lines. Enhanced by dozens of rare photos, this is...

Courage and air warfare: the Allied aircrew experience in the Second World War

Colonel Wells investigates the nature of aerial warfare and the men who took part. The book analyzes aircrew selection, reaction to combat, adaptability to stress, morale, leadership and combat effectiveness, and compares the efforts of the US Eighth Air Force and RAF Bomber Command.

To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942–1944 by Stephen L. McFarland, Wesley P. Newton

958 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Marne in 1914, Canadian troops won a clear-cut victory for the Allied cause by advancing two-and-a-half miles in a matter of three days, thus attaining all of their objectives while suffering a casualty rate of only 16 percent. New weapons, new communications, new tactics, new intelligence methods, and meticulous preparation for the attack made the capture of Vimy Ridge possible; yet some oddly archaic touches in Rawling’s account surely demonstrate a residual rigidity in British (and Cana­ dian) military management. For, as he baldly remarks, “Cavalry did manage to engage the enemy, but suffered heavy casualties from German machine guns” (p. 125). In short, Rawling supports his central thesis convincingly enough, but the positive tone he adopts in describing Canadian technological and organizational responses to the battle experience of World War I strikes me as rather too kind to the brass hats. William H. McNeill Dr. McNeill is professor of history emeritus of the University of Chicago. To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942— 1944. By Stephen L. McFarland and Wesley P. Newton. Washing­ ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Pp. xiii + 328; illus­ trations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $35.00. According to Stephen McFarland and Wesley Newton, the history of the United States Eighth Air Force’s conquest of aerial superiority in protracted struggle against the German Luftwaffe from 1942 through 1944 is the untold story of World War II. Most observers have regarded the securing of aerial superiority as an intermediate step in winning the war, while the air force’s official history of the war essentially disregarded it. In To Command the Sky, McFarland and Newton have written the hrst book to examine the evolution of the doctrine of air superiority, the struggle to gain it over Europe, and its importance for the final victory over Germany. They contend that the answers to the questions of whether and how strategic bombing contributed to Allied victory lie in analysis of the struggle to achieve aerial superiority. In an aerial battle of attrition that they term the “trench warfare” of World War II, the Eighth Air Force forced the Luftwaffe to defend the Reich and then destroyed it in combat, allowing strategic bombing and the Allied invasion of Normandy. The authors begin their story with the origins of the question of aerial superiority in World War I and the evolution of attitudes about the importance of fighter aircraft in the interwar years. After tracing the perceptions of early theorists like Douhet and commanders like Trenchard and Mitchell, they explain that in the 1920s the air arm downgraded pursuit in favor of the bomber, which would secure TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 959 aerial superiority in a precision strategic bombing campaign. When the United States Army Air Force entered the war, it consequently ignored the long-range fighter and adhered to the doctrine that strategic bombers would achieve superiority by striking the sources of aircraft supply and then meeting and beating the Luftwaffe in the air in a frontal assault on Germany. This study is not one-sidedly devoted to American developments. The authors examine German fighter development and fighter pilot training during the 1930s and into World War II, making very clear the tremendous significance—and the usual omission in discussions of the war—of training large numbers of pilots for the coming battle of attrition. McFarland and Newton examine the unfolding of the air opera­ tions over the Continent. In a discussion that is both anecdotal and analytical, they explain the roles of American commanders like Arnold, Eaker, Spaatz, Doolittle, Hunter, and Kepner and the reasons for changes in command. They trace the development of German fighter defenses, the Luftwaffe’s failure to train adequate pilots for attrition warfare, and its weakness in bad weather flight training. They conclude that as of late 1943, after the titanic struggle over Schweinfurt, the Eighth Air Force was losing the war of attrition. German war production was expanding even as the Eighth strove to destroy it. American advocates of the strategic bomber had not recognized the value of aerial superiority and had not realized...

The Oxford Experiment in H2X Radar Bombing

The Eighth Air Force, in England, established its operational research section in 1942, the first OR unit in the air force. The bombing accuracy subsection quickly established methods for using strike photographs to determine the accuracy of visual bombing. The cloud cover over Europe forced the air force to bomb with H2X radar blind bombing equipment on many missions; the accuracy was poor. G. B. Price, the subsection's specialist on H2X bombing, used two combat planes and crews for simulated H2X bombing of two targets in Oxford to test the inherent accuracy of the equipment.

An Eighth Air Force Bombardier Looks Back at Operations Analysis

A World War II bombardier describes the work done by operations analysts with the Eighth Air Force in World War II to improve bombing accuracy. In October 1942, less than 15 percent of the bombs dropped were falling within 1,000 feet of the assigned aiming point; in October 1944, more than 60 percent fell within this circle.

Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914–1918 by Bill Rawling

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 957 stab, and still be distracted by them. Bucholz’s working definition of technology as “the systematic application of scientific knowledge to the practical task of war planning” (p. 168) works for him, but one wonders—to cite a relevant example—how much of the Railroad Section’s knowledge was empirical rather than scientific. Specialists in German history will no doubt question some of Bucholz’s political and cultural interpretations, for example concerning the origins and importance of Moltke’s apocalyptic premonitions. But these are quibbles: this book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the key but surprisingly neglected technological dimensions of a pivotal episode in world history. John F. Guilmartin Dr. Gvilmartin is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University. Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914— 1918. By Bill Rawling. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1992. Pp. 325; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). That British commanders in the First World War were “bumbling dolts” became a commonplace of public discourse and historical writing from the 1920s. Bill Rawling takes a more charitable view, arguing that “British staff officers and commanders in the field examined each battle closely in order to derive from it what lessons they could” (pp. 67—68). Moreover, “trench inventors” altered their weapons in significant ways because “Canadian soldiers were less sheep led to the slaughter than thinking people who set their minds to the challenges of survival, and, in the process, contributed to the defeat of a well-trained and well-motivated enemy” (p. 223). The war as learning experience is Rawling’s theme, with special attention to technological innovations—including some utterly famil­ iar, like radio, tanks, and airplanes, and some since forgotten, like the “power buzzers” that were designed to send Morse code messages from advancing infantry back to battalion headquarters by propagat­ ing high-pitched sound waves through the ground. But, as Rawling points out, “The device worked only in one direction, and ground conditions had to be just right,” with the result that, “as in all prior battles, runners proved the most efficient means of getting messages to battalion headquarters” (p. 127). Most of the book consists of rather close description of the successive battles in which Canadian troops engaged, and the techni­ cal lessons drawn from their experiences. There is little new in these narratives, though Canadian readers may swell with pride at Rawl­ ing’s account of how careful preparation for the assault on Vimy Ridge paid off in 1917 when, for the first time since the Battle of the 958 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Marne in 1914, Canadian troops won a clear-cut victory for the Allied cause by advancing two-and-a-half miles in a matter of three days, thus attaining all of their objectives while suffering a casualty rate of only 16 percent. New weapons, new communications, new tactics, new intelligence methods, and meticulous preparation for the attack made the capture of Vimy Ridge possible; yet some oddly archaic touches in Rawling’s account surely demonstrate a residual rigidity in British (and Cana­ dian) military management. For, as he baldly remarks, “Cavalry did manage to engage the enemy, but suffered heavy casualties from German machine guns” (p. 125). In short, Rawling supports his central thesis convincingly enough, but the positive tone he adopts in describing Canadian technological and organizational responses to the battle experience of World War I strikes me as rather too kind to the brass hats. William H. McNeill Dr. McNeill is professor of history emeritus of the University of Chicago. To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942— 1944. By Stephen L. McFarland and Wesley P. Newton. Washing­ ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Pp. xiii + 328; illus­ trations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $35.00. According to Stephen McFarland and Wesley Newton, the history of the United States Eighth Air Force’s conquest of aerial superiority in protracted struggle against the German Luftwaffe from 1942 through 1944 is the untold story of World War II. Most observers have regarded the securing of aerial superiority as an intermediate step in...