Author :
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 36,73 MB
Release : 1999
Category :
ISBN :
This book contains the following chapters concerning Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing in World War II: the problems of air power, (2) the early years: education and acts, (3) planning, (4) the frictions of war, (5) the global bomber force, (6) triumph, and (7) tragedy.
Author : Charles Griffith
Publisher : DIANE Publishing
Page : 472 pages
File Size : 17,50 MB
Release : 1999
Category :
ISBN : 142899131X
This book contains the following chapters concerning Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing in World War II: the problems of air power, (2) the early years: education and acts, (3) planning, (4) the frictions of war, (5) the global bomber force, (6) triumph, and (7) tragedy.
Author : Charles Griffith
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 10,23 MB
Release : 1999
Category :
ISBN :
Author : Air University Air University Press
Publisher :
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 12,87 MB
Release : 2019-07-25
Category :
ISBN : 9781082492860
This biography of Maj Gen Haywood S. Hansell Jr. provides an in-depth look at the life and career of one of airpower's pioneer thinkers. General Hansell's professional life was devoted to the theory and practice of strategic airpower--the single most controversial military debate of the twentieth century. Hansell believed that wars could and should be won through precision bombing of military and industrial / commercial targets, a theory and practice that the United States Army Air Forces abandoned during World War II because of the dictates of existing technology, the demands of combat, and the fact that the passions of war swept away any moral concerns involving strategic bombing. Nevertheless, Hansell's main contribution to air doctrine was the concept that through selective targeting and an ability to place the bombs on those targets, airpower could win wars by crippling an enemy's ability to supply his forces and without causing wanton death and destruction. The author believes that the Persian Gulf War went a long way toward proving Hansell's theories to be correct.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 27,32 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Bombing, Aerial
ISBN :
Author : Gian P. Gentile
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 32,71 MB
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : 9780814731352
In the wake of WWII, President Truman established the US Strategic Bombing Survey to determine how effectively strategic air power had been applied during the war. The final study has been used for decades as an objective primary source and a guiding text. Gentile (history, US Military Academy) re-examines this document to reveal how it reflected the American conceptual approach to strategic bombing. He exposes the survey as largely tautological, throwing into question many of the central tenets of American air power philosophy and strategy. He shows how recent problems with bomb damage assessment in the Balkans reinforce his conclusions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
Author : Stewart Halsey Ross
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 12,28 MB
Release : 2015-10-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1476616116
The United States relied heavily on bombing to defeat the Germans and the Japanese in World War II, and air raids were touted as "precision" bombing in American propaganda. But was precision possible over cloud-covered Europe or a darkened Japanese countryside? Could the vaunted Norden optical bombsight in fact "drop bombs into pickle barrels" as advertised? Were the American aircrews well trained and well protected? How good were their airplanes? What were the results of the costly raids? This work sets suppositions against facts surrounding the United States' use of strategic bombing in World War II. Chapters cover the events leading up to World War II; the start of the war; the seers and the planners; the airplanes, bombs, bombsights, and aircrews; the planes Germany used to defend itself against American planes; the five cities (Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki) that experienced the most destruction; and the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey of the damage done by aerial bombing. The book also probes the government's myth-building statements that supported America's view of itself as a uniquely humanitarian nation, and analyzes the role played by interservice rivalry--"battleship admirals" against "bomber generals."
Author : Major John M. Curatola
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 44,15 MB
Release : 2014-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1782897143
European airpower theorists of the 1920’s and 30’s envisioned the deliberate bombing of civilians in order to affect an enemy nation’s wartime production capabilities and national morale. However, American proponents of airpower were more exacting in their approach to the use of the airplane. The US Army Air Corps developed the idea of precision bombing as a means to destroy an enemy’s ability to prosecute war through the targeting of only an enemy’s means of production and state infrastructure while avoiding civilian casualties. World War II provided the US Army Air Force (USAAF) the opportunity to prove the effectiveness of this theory. However, as the war progressed, the USAAF targeted not just centers of production, but political targets as well as civilian populations. Thus, USAAF bombing came to resemble the type of application that was initially proffered by European theorists. Large-scale bombing of cities and populations became the mode of operation for the USAAF in the Pacific. Despite its policies and doctrine, the USAAF deliberately bombed civilian populations in conjunction with the Japanese means of production. Why did this targeting change take place? How did the USAAF eventually come to conduct indiscriminate area bombing of civilians despite the perception that it was contrary to our national mores?
Author : Phil Haun
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 15,29 MB
Release : 2019-04-12
Category : History
ISBN : 0813176808
Following the cataclysmic losses suffered in World War I, air power theorists in Europe advocated for long-range bombers to overfly the trenches and strike deep into the enemy's heartland. The bombing of cities was seen as a means to collapse the enemy's will to resist and bring the war to a quick end. In the United States, airmen called for an independent air force, but with the nation's return to isolationism, there was little appetite for an offensive air power doctrine. By the 1930s, however, a cadre of officers at the US Army Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) had articulated an operational concept of high-altitude daylight precision bombing (HADPB) that would be the foundation for a uniquely American vision of strategic air attack. In Lectures of the Air Corps Tactical School and American Strategic Bombing in World War II editor Phil Haun brings together nine ACTS lecture transcripts, which have been preserved in Air Force archives, exactly as delivered to the airmen destined to lead the US Army Air Forces in World War II. Presented is a distinctive American strategy of high-altitude daylight precision bombing as told through lectures given at the ACTS during the interwar period and how these airmen put the theory to the test. The book examines the Air Corps theory of HADPB as compared to the reality of combat in World War II by relying on recent, revisionist histories that have given scholars a deeper understanding of the impact of strategic bombing on Germany.
Author : Stephen Lee McFarland
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 96 pages
File Size : 26,59 MB
Release : 1997
Category : History
ISBN :
Except in a few instances, since World War II no American soldier or sailor has been attacked by enemy air power. Conversely, no enemy soldier orsailor has acted in combat without being attacked or at least threatened by American air power. Aviators have brought the air weapon to bear against enemies while denying them the same prerogative. This is the legacy of the U.S. AirForce, purchased at great cost in both human and material resources.More often than not, aerial pioneers had to fight technological ignorance, bureaucratic opposition, public apathy, and disagreement over purpose.Every step in the evolution of air power led into new and untrodden territory, driven by humanitarian impulses; by the search for higher, faster, and farther flight; or by the conviction that the air way was the best way. Warriors have always coveted the high ground. If technology permitted them to reach it, men, women andan air force held and exploited it-from Thomas Selfridge, first among so many who gave that "last full measure of devotion"; to Women's Airforce Service Pilot Ann Baumgartner, who broke social barriers to become the first Americanwoman to pilot a jet; to Benjamin Davis, who broke racial barriers to become the first African American to command a flying group; to Chuck Yeager, a one-time non-commissioned flight officer who was the first to exceed the speed of sound; to John Levitow, who earned the Medal of Honor by throwing himself over a live flare to save his gunship crew; to John Warden, who began a revolution in air power thought and strategy that was put to spectacular use in the Gulf War.Industrialization has brought total war and air power has brought the means to overfly an enemy's defenses and attack its sources of power directly. Americans have perceived air power from the start as a more efficient means of waging war and as a symbol of the nation's commitment to technology to master challenges, minimize casualties, and defeat adversaries.
