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Author: Charles Griffith
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 472
ISBN-13: 142899131X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
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Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781585660698
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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: Air University Air University Press
Publisher:
Published: 2019-07-25
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9781082492860
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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: Gian P. Gentile
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 302
ISBN-13: 9780814731352
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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
Published: 2015-10-03
Total Pages: 254
ISBN-13: 1476616116
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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
Published: 2014-08-15
Total Pages: 94
ISBN-13: 1782897143
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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: Colonel T. Tracey Goetz
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2014-08-15
Total Pages: 52
ISBN-13: 1782897976
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With the collapse of France in 1940, American (US) and British (UK) leadership became keenly aware that the continued security of their nations required the defeat of the Axis powers, particularly Germany. The Allies chose a strategy utilizing a combination of various military actions, most notably a combined bomber offensive (CBO). The CBO would be carried out through a combination of US daylight precision and UK night area bombing. The purpose of this paper is to show why the Allies chose this strategy and evaluate its success. To accomplish this task, the paper will first describe the events that brought about the conflict and the strategy. Crowl’s Questions are used as a framework to analyze the factors that influence strategy development and adoption and will illustrate why Allied leaders chose this path. This is followed by a detailed description of the campaign. The principles of war (mass, objective, offensive, maneuver, surprise, security, simplicity, unity of command, and economy of force) are accepted as proven methods for employing forces in combat and are used to evaluate the CBO’s effectiveness The paper closes with a summary of the findings and doctrinal implications. The paper will show the Allies adopted US daylight precision and UK night area bombing based on leadership’s belief that it could most effectively reduce Germany’s means of war and hasten its earliest possible defeat. The Allies successfully achieved this objective primarily through adherence to the principles of mass, objective, offensive, and maneuver.
Author: Jacob Neufeld
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Published: 2009-06
Total Pages: 191
ISBN-13: 1437912869
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume records the proceedings of a symposium held in July 1995 at the Naval Officers' Club, Bethesda, Maryland. Contents: Grand strategy in the Pacific war / Gerhard L. Weinberg -- Joint operations / Walter S. Poole -- The island campaign / Edwin H. Simmons -- Intelligence methodologies in the Pacific war / John Prados -- The sea war against Japan / William S. Dudley -- Military technology and the Pacific war / Richard P. Hallion -- Strategic intelligence and war termination / Edward J. Drea -- Revolutionizing submarine warfare / Eugene B. Fluckey -- The strategic air war against Japan / William M. Leary -- The decision to drop the atomic bomb / Theodore H. McNelly. Photos.
Author: DANIEL T. SCHWABE
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Published: 2015-01-01
Total Pages: 318
ISBN-13: 1612346405
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Burning Japan is an investigation of how and why the air force shifted its tactics against Japan from a precision bombing strategy to area attacks. The guiding doctrine of the 1930s and 1940s called for focused attacks on specific targets deep behind enemy lines. Eager to prove itself, the nascent Army Air Force at first lauded the indispensability of strategic bombardment in areas otherwise unreachable by the army or navy. But when strategic bombing failed to yield the desired results in Europe and in initial efforts against Japan, the United States switched tactics, a shift that culminated in the area firebombing of nearly every major Japanese metropolis and the burning of sixty-six cities to the ground.
