Download or read book Command Of The Air written by General Giulio Douhet and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the pantheon of air power spokesmen, Giulio Douhet holds center stage. His writings, more often cited than perhaps actually read, appear as excerpts and aphorisms in the writings of numerous other air power spokesmen, advocates-and critics. Though a highly controversial figure, the very controversy that surrounds him offers to us a testimonial of the value and depth of his work, and the need for airmen today to become familiar with his thought. The progressive development of air power to the point where, today, it is more correct to refer to aerospace power has not outdated the notions of Douhet in the slightest In fact, in many ways, the kinds of technological capabilities that we enjoy as a global air power provider attest to the breadth of his vision. Douhet, together with Hugh “Boom” Trenchard of Great Britain and William “Billy” Mitchell of the United States, is justly recognized as one of the three great spokesmen of the early air power era. This reprint is offered in the spirit of continuing the dialogue that Douhet himself so perceptively began with the first edition of this book, published in 1921. Readers may well find much that they disagree with in this book, but also much that is of enduring value. The vital necessity of Douhet’s central vision-that command of the air is all important in modern warfare-has been proven throughout the history of wars in this century, from the fighting over the Somme to the air war over Kuwait and Iraq.

Download or read book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany written by Sir Charles Kingsley Webster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany written by Sir Charles Kingsley Webster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany written by Sir Charles Kingsley Webster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hitting Home The Air Offensive Against Japan Illustrated Edition written by Daniel L. Haulman and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes 20 illustrations The strategic bombardment of Japan during World War II remains one of the most controversial subjects of military history because it involved the first and only use of atomic weapons in war. It also raised the question of whether strategic bombing alone can win wars, a question that dominated U.S. Air Force thinking for a generation. Without question, the strategic bombing of Japan contributed very heavily to the Japanese decision to surrender. The United States and her allies did not have to invade the home islands, an invasion that would have cost many thousands of lives on both sides. This pamphlet traces the development of the bombing of the Japanese home islands, from the modest but dramatic Doolittle raid on Tokyo in April 1942, through the effort to bomb from bases in China that were supplied by airlift over the Himalayas, to the huge 500-plane raids from the Marianas in the Pacific. The campaign changed from precision daylight bombing to night incendiary bombing of Japanese cities and ultimately to the use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The story covers the debut of the spectacular B-29 aircraft—in many ways the most awesome weapon of World War II— and its use not only as a bomber but also as a mine-layer. Hitting Home is the sequel to High Road to Tokyo Bay, a pamphlet by the same author that concentrated on Army Air Forces’ tactical operations in Asia and the Pacific areas during World War II. Taken together, they provide an overview of U.S. Army Air Forces’ operations, tactical and strategic, against Japan. The U.S. air offensive against Japan is the central story of the Pacific war—a drama of human courage and sacrifice and of a unique partnership among modern air, sea, and land forces.

Download or read book Hitting Home written by Daniel L. Haulman and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the strategic bombardment of Japan's home islands, from the modest but dramatic Doolittle raid on Tokyo in April 1942,through the effort to bomb from bases in China, to the raids from the Marianas in the Pacific, and finally, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Photos.

Download or read book The Air Offensive Against Germany written by Great Britain. Air Ministry and published by . This book was released on 1941 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany Victory written by Sir Charles Kingsley Webster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Battle Over the Reich written by Alfred Price and published by Classic Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Completely revised, expanded and updated edition of this classic 1973 work. The campaign is analysed from RAF, USAAF and Luftwaffe viewpoints, with in-depth assessment of daylight and nocturnal operations, aircraft weapons, radar and ground defence.

Download or read book RAF On the Offensive written by Greg Baughen and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2018-09-30 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before the start of the Second World War it had been believed that strategic bombing would be the deciding factor in any future conflict. Then Hitler launched the Blitzkrieg upon France and the Low Countries in 1940, and the much-vaunted French Army and the British Expeditionary Force were swept away in just six weeks.This new form of warfare shook the Air Ministry, but the expected invasion never came and the Battle of Britain was fought in the air. It seemed that air forces operating independently could determine the course of the war. An Army scarcely seemed necessary for the defence of the UK and no British army could ever be powerful enough to mount an invasion of Europe on its own. Bombing Germany into defeat seemed Britain's only option. In North Africa, however, Commonwealth armies and air forces were demonstrating that they too could use blitzkrieg tactics to crush opponents. Britain was also no longer alone; Greece and then the Soviet Union joined the fight.RAF on the Offensive describes how British air power developed after the Battle of Britain. Attitudes were beginning to change – the fighter, rather than the bomber, was re-emerging as the principal means of gaining air superiority. As 1941 drew to a close, the strategic air offensive appeared to be achieving little and conventional land warfare seemed poised to replace it as the way to defeat the enemy. Which direction, then, would the war take?

Download or read book Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939 1945 written by Charles Kingsley Webster and published by Naval & Military Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No aspect of the Second World War has become more controversial in recent years than Britain s Strategic Air Offensive against Germany. Argument has raged over both the morality of mass bombing of heavily populated cities; over its effectiveness in seriously impairing Germany s war effort and over the horrendous casualty rates caused - both to civilians on the ground, and to the aircrew of RAF Bomber Command who lost some 52,000 men - a higher attrition rate than any other branch of the armed services. In assessing the campaign the official British history of the offensive, of which this is the fourth and final volume, is indispensible. This book contains the background documents - some highly secret - on which the previous narratives of the campaign are based. There are chapters on radar - that war-winning British invention - on navigational aids; on bombs and bombsights and on post-war British and US surveys into the effectiveness of their devastating attacks. There are minutes, mem oranda, operational orders and reports from the key figures involved in directing the air war: Sir Arthur B omber Harris himself; Sir John Dill, Sir Charles Portal and from the father of the RAF, Lord Trenchard. There are also important papers from the other side of the hill - the Germans, including police reports on the firestorm which swept away the port of Hamburg; and personal reports from Armaments MInister Albert Speer to Hitler on the results of the RAF blitz on German oil and fuel production in June 1944. The book also contains fascinating facts and figures on losses to aircrew, tonnage of bombs dropped, the RAF s order of battle and estimates of damage done and civilian casualties. Altogether this essential book gives the hard facts on which any conclusions about Britain s air offensive must ultimately be based.

Download or read book Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany written by Senior Research Fellow Charles Webster and published by . This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This, the third in the four volumes of the British Official History of the Second World War dealing with Bomber Command s air offensive against Germany, covers the final year of the offensive: from April1944 to May 1945. It is a story of growing allied strength and technical effectiveness. In July 1944, more than 5,000 RAF and USAF bombers were raining down bombs on Germany from their bases in Britain and Italy. In March 1944, the peak month, the RAF alone dropped more than 67,000 tons of bombs, and the Allies between them more than 130,000 tons. Yet all this was achieved against a background of continued controversy among the Allied air chiefs over the purpose of the bombing . The old squabbles over whether precision or general area bombing should be the main aim re-opened now that the allies had the capacity to do either, both at night and in daylight. In addition the allied offensive was, from early 1944 onwards, increasingly subjected to the needs of Operation Overlord - the invasion of German-occupied Europe. As well as pounding the industrial heart of Germany to achive air superiority; disruption of German production and a slump in German civilian morale; the RAF and USAF were expected to prepare for, and subsequently support, the invasion. Despite this diversion, as Bomber Command switched to devastating the French railway system, relentless attacks on Germany went on - particulalry on oil production. But the head of Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, continued to insist on the primacy of area bombing of German cities, in the teeth of growing doubts among Sir Charles Portal s Air Staff, and in October 1944, write the authors, the strategic air offensive was resumed with unprecedented violence . But the unresolved differences between Portal, Harris, and Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, who favoured attacking enemy communications above all, remained, say the authors a tragic deadlock . Probably the darkest shadow hanging over the final months of the air offensive, however, was the massive raid on Dresden in Februrary 1944. In this attack, made by the RAF by night and the USAF by day, many thousands of civilians died and the city centre was totally razed. Dresden was, and remains, hugely controversial, and was even criticised by Churchill, although, as the authors point out: it was he himself who contributed much of the incentive to carry it out . Despite such clashes and controversies however, as the authors insist, the actual operations were an undoubted triumph and the war in Europe ended with Harris s aim achieved: a devastated Germany with her industrial productivity destroyed and the centres of her cities in ruins. With 14 maps and 29 photographs.

Download or read book The Bomber War written by Robin Neillands and published by . This book was released on 2001-07-23 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bomber campaign against Germany is one of the most contentious of World War II. Was anything achieved by the deaths of thousands of German civilians-many of them women and children? Or were all means justified against Nazi Germany? Acclaimed military historian Robin Neillands examines every detail of the allied campaign led by British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris: the strengths and fundamental flaws, the technical difficulties and developments and, above all, the day-to-day, night-by-night endurance of the crews flying to the limit in discomfort and danger, facing flak and enemy fire. Personal experiences of British, American, Canadian, Australian and other ally fliers play a key part in this account, along with those of German airmen and civilians. Though The Bomber War discusses Guernica and the destruction of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it concentrates on the European theater, on Germany's air war against the allies - over Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and Coventry-which led the fierce allied raids carried out against Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and the Ruhr and-most notorious of all-the tremendous destruction of Dresden in the last months of the war. Robin Neillands also examines the complex moral issues involved in the air war, and of the case made against "Bomber" Harris. This is a timely addition to the history of conflict; the age of free-fall bombs has passed, but many veterans-on both sides-are still alive to state their case, and to tell a knew generation what their war was like.

Download or read book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany written by Charles Kingsley Webster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939 1945 Vol 4 Annexes and Appendices written by Sir Charles Kingsley Webster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bomb Group written by Paul Bingley and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The authors do a good job using the diaries, interviews, and books written by group members to convey a vivid—sometimes too vivid—picture of war at its most elemental." —The Journal of the Air Force Historical Foundation In February 1942, a reconnaissance party of United States Army Air Force officers arrived in England. Firmly wedded to the doctrine of daylight precision bombing, they believed they could help turn the tide of the war in Europe. In the months that followed, they formed the Eighth Air Force – an organization that grew at an astonishing rate. To accommodate it, almost seventy airfields were hastily built across the eastern counties of England. At the heart of the Eighth Air Force was its bombardment groups, each equipped with scores of heavily armed, four-engine bombers. These Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and Consolidated B-24 Liberators were soon punching through the enemy's defenses to bomb targets vital to its war effort. They were crewed by thousands of young American airmen, most of whom were volunteers. This book tells the story of just one "Bomb Group" – the 381st, which crossed the Atlantic in May 1943. Arriving at RAF Ridgewell on the Essex-Suffolk border, its airmen quickly found themselves thrown into the hazardous and attritional air battle raging in the skies over Europe. The 381st’s path led from its formation in the Texan desert, to its 297th and final bombing mission deep into the heart of Hitler’s Third Reich. This is the remarkable story of one group and the part it played in the strategic bombing campaign of "The Mighty Eighth."

Download or read book The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany Preparation pt 1 3 written by Sir Charles Kingsley Webster and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: