A Concise History of the US Air Force - Air Force Historical Studies ...

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direct or indirect support of other components of the Nation’s armed forces.” It believed the primary target was the adversary’s army. The most vocal opponent of this view was Assistant Chief of the Air Service, Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, who saw in strategic bombing the prop- er use of air power. Close air support and interdiction, he asserted, only perpetuated trench warfare and the horrors of World-War I-like slaughter. He argued for a force that could strike directly at an enemy’s vitals, “cen- ters of production of all kinds, means of transportation, agricultural areas, ports and shipping,” forcing “a decision before the ground troops or sea forces could join in battle.” Mitchell’s actions created opponents as well as adherents. A series of highly publicized ship-bombing tests begun in 1921 overshad- owed the ideas he had espoused in books such as Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modem Air Power-Economic and Military. Air Service bombers sank several unmanned, anchored ships, including battleships. Mitchell’s apparent success, despite poor bombing accuracy, diverted both the public’s and the Congress’s attention from more critical aerial achievements and issues of the period. Mitchell’s troubles with Army and Navy leaders eventually led to his court martial after he spoke intemperately about the crash of the airship Shenandoah in 1925. (He blamed the loss on “incompetency, criminal negligence, and almost treasonable administration.”) President Coolidge, famous for his reticence and nicknamed “Silent Cal,” expressed a widely-held view when he contended, “General Mitchell [has] talked more in the last three months than I [have] in my whole life.” Behind such scenes, Chief of the Air Corps Major General James Fechet urged his officers in 1928 to look beyond the battlefield, beyond close air support, and find a way for the Air Corps to win a war indepen- dently. He imposed only three limitations: First, the Air Corps had to get the most for any money available. Second, civilians could not be targets of aerial attack. Secretary of War Newton Baker had ruled earlier that doing so “constituted an abandonment of the time-honored practice among civilized people of restricting bombardment to fortified places or to places from which the civilian population had an opportunity to be removed.” Americans would not undertake terror raids, he said, “on the most elemental ethical and humanitarian grounds.” Third, anything the Air Corps did would have to solve or avoid the evils of trench warfare. One officer who answered Fechet’s challenge was Lieutenant Kenneth Walker. Conventional wisdom taught that while airmen achieved high accuracy when they bombed from high altitudes, they exposed themselves to deadly ground fire. Walker showed that daylight high-altitude 15
Interwar Air Service Pioneers Top to bottom: Suited for extreme cold, Lieutenant John Macready with the Pack- ard LePere aircraft in which he set the American altitude record of 34,508 feet in 1921; Sergeant Roy Hooe, Lieutenant jor Carl Spatz (later spelled Spaatz), and Lieutenant Elwood Quesada after their record-setting endurance flight in the Fokker Trimotor Question Murk in 1929; the Question Murk being refueled on its famous flight; Lieutenant Jimmy Doolittle in the Consolidated NY-2 he piloted dur- ing blind flying tests in 1929. The enclosing hood is folded around the cockpit.
Page 2 and 3: A Concise History of the U.S. Air F
Page 4 and 5: The Genesis of American Air Power T
Page 6 and 7: vivid contrast to aerial achievemen
Page 8 and 9: For sale by the US. Government Prin
Page 10 and 11: In the United States an outpouring
Page 12 and 13: commander, General John Pershing, c
Page 14 and 15: Early Military Aviation Leaders The
Page 16 and 17: served him well at St. Mihiel in Se
Page 18 and 19: No one in the Air Service was parti
Page 22 and 23: Interwar Aircraft In amazing techno
Page 24 and 25: AF) on March 1, 1935. This first Am
Page 26 and 27: World War 11-Global Conflict Despit
Page 28 and 29: 35 percent of America’s total inv
Page 30 and 31: Principal American participants at
Page 32 and 33: ought to bear against attacking fig
Page 34 and 35: scheduled by the Allies for late sp
Page 37 and 38: Despite heroic efforts to restore p
Page 39 and 40: Molding the Line in the Pacific Top
Page 41 and 42: America’s Air War in Asia Right,
Page 43 and 44: Hansell’s XXI Bomber Command, the
Page 45 and 46: nance, radar, jets, rockets, and a
Page 47 and 48: The newly independent U.S. Air Forc
Page 49 and 50: In addition, vast distances to targ
Page 51 and 52: Principal American air commanders a
Page 53 and 54: Korean War fighters. North American
Page 55 and 56: Air Force attacked 78 cities and to
Page 57 and 58: Atlas, lef, and Titan I, right, int
Page 59 and 60: off at a moment’s notice; another
Page 61 and 62: Union. A more capable SR-71 Blackbi
Page 63 and 64: clude, “We’re eyeball to eyebal
Page 65 and 66: Vietnam-based Viet Cong, the other
Page 67 and 68: ombed, the two most famous were the
Page 69 and 70: Transport Aircraft in Vietnam The U
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The Tet offensive proved a military
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The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird strate
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meant that warheads could be smalle
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Beginning in March 1985, Soviet Com
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on an enemy army to isolate it on t
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America’s Air War in the Gulf
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tionally-televised attack by two F-
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2 percent of combat sorties. Their
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in the next. An innovator behind fi
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Hallion, Richard P. Rise of the Fig
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