Download or read book America s Pursuit of Precision Bombing 1910 1945 written by Stephen Lee McFarland and published by Smithsonian Books (DC). This book was released on 1995 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: McFarland (history, Auburn U.) traces the development of two interrelated technologies, bombsights and automatic pilots, from the first efforts in 1910 to stabilize aircraft during bombing to the atomic bombing of Japan. Drawing on primary documents he explains how the US government and the public wanted to hone bombing into a precise and effective instrument to end wars quickly with the fewest number of civilian casualties, and how the famous Nordon bombsight contributed to most of the destruction of military and industrial targets in Japan and Germany during World War II. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book American Arsenal written by Patrick Coffey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Arsenal examines the United States' transformation from isolationist state to military superpower by means of sixteen vignettes, each focusing upon an inventor and his contribution to the cause.

Download or read book The Reich Wreckers An Analysis Of The 306th Bomb Group During World War II written by Major Charles J. Westgate III and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents an analysis of the 306th Bomb Group’s contributions during World War II. Rather than providing a simple recounting of the various dates and accomplishments, the paper analyzes some of the key indicators and statistics of the group’s performance. In particular, the paper focuses on comparing aircraft losses and bombing results of the 306th with the Eighth Air Force’s. The analysis also examined other areas, such as: mission aborts, enemy aircraft claimed destroyed, weather conditions over target, bombing methods used, presence of fighter escorts, and strength of enemy air defenses (enemy fighter aircraft and flak). The purpose of the analysis was to gain a better understanding of the group’s overall performance within the bigger scope of the Eighth Air Force’s war effort. The analysis was conducted in three steps. First, the archives of the Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA) were searched for statistics on the 306th. Next, similar statistics were collected for the Eighth Air Force. Finally, the data for the two units was analyzed and compared, to aid in determining conclusions. To facilitate the last step of the research, the air war was divided into four periods. The goals and objectives for each period were used as criteria to grade the unit’s effectiveness. In general, the study concluded that the 306th Bomb Group was a “typical” B-17 bomber group in World War II. When comparing the various statistics and graphs provide in this paper, we see that in most cases there was little difference in the data for the 306th and the Eighth Air Force. However, the statistics do not tell the whole story. As one of the cadre groups of the Eighth Air Force, many of the improvements and lessons learned during the early period of the war were at the expense of the 306th. These early lessons and experiments were important and led to the improvements that saved many lives and brought an end to the war.

Download or read book Reader s Guide to Military History written by Charles Messenger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 985 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains some 600 entries on a range of topics from ancient Chinese warfare to late 20th-century intervention operations. Designed for a wide variety of users, it encompasses general reviews of aspects of military organization and science, as well as specific wars and conflicts. The book examines naval and air warfare, as well as significant individuals, including commanders, theorists, and war leaders. Each entry includes a listing of additional publications on the topic, accompanied by an article discussing these publications with reference to their particular emphases, strengths, and limitations.

Download or read book How the War Was Won written by Phillips Payson O'Brien and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important new history of air and sea power in World War II and its decisive role in Allied victory.

Download or read book Collateral Damage written by Sahr Conway-Lanz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Collateral damage" is a military term for the inadvertent casualties and destruction inflicted on civilians in the course of military operations. In Collateral Damage: Americans, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II, Sahr Conway-Lanz chronicles the history of America's attempt to reconcile the ideal of sparing civilians with the reality that modern warfare results in the killing of innocent people. Drawing on policymakers' response to the issues raised by the atrocities of World War II and the use of the atomic bomb, as well as the ongoing debate by the American public and the media as the Korean War developed, Conway-Lanz provides a comprehensive examination of modern American discourse on the topic of civilian casualties and provides a fascinating look at the development of what is now commonly known as collateral damage.

Download or read book Strategic Bombing by the United States in World War II written by Stewart Halsey Ross and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-03 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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."

Download or read book Downfall written by Richard B. Frank and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-05-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a riveting narrative that includes information from newly declassified documents, acclaimed historian Richard B. Frank gives a scrupulously detailed explanation of the critical months leading up to the dropping of the atomic bomb. Frank explains how American leaders learned in the summer of 1945 that their alternate strategy to end the war by invasion had been shattered by the massive Japanese buildup on Kyushu, and that intercepted diplomatic documents also revealed the dismal prospects of negotiation. Here also, for the first time, is a comprehensive account of how Japan's leaders were willing to risk complete annihilation to preserve the nation's existing order. Frank's comprehensive account demolishes long-standing myths with the stark realities of this great historical controversy.

Download or read book Pearl to V J Day written by Jacob Neufeld and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In observance of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Air Force History and Museums Program sponsored a symposium on the War in the Pacific held at the Bethesda, MD, Naval Officers' Club. The gathering offered a unique opportunity for its guest panelists -- participants in that war or historians of it -- to reflect on a variety of subjects: Japanese objectives; American military preparedness and grand strategy; the interaction between U.S. Army, Air, and Navy leaders; combined operations; political and diplomatic intrigue; the challenges of ground, air, and sea warfare within differing Pacific theaters; military science and technology; the essential role of intelligence; the proposed Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands; and the use of the atomic bombs. For the United States, World War II began and ended in the Pacific, from Japan's aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, to its surrender in Tokyo Bay, on September 2, 1945. For all but 5 months of those years, Americans and their Allies were compelled to hold the line in Asia, doggedly opposing imperialist Japan while a "Europe First" policy against Nazi Germany and fascist Italy prevailed in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The United States operated over huge distances, from China, Burma, and India, to countless Pacific islands. Sixty-five photographs are included.

Download or read book Selling Air Power written by Steve Call and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Selling Air Power, Steve Call provides the first comprehensive study of the efforts of post-war air power advocates to harness popular culture in support of their agenda. In the 1940s and much of the 1950s, hardly a month went by without at least one blatantly pro-air power article appearing in general interest magazines. Public fascination with flight helped create and sustain exaggerated expectations for air power in the minds of both its official proponents and the American public. Articles in the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, and Life trumpeted the secure future assured by American air superiority. Military figures like Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and Curtis E. LeMay, radio-television personalities such as Arthur Godfrey, cartoon figures like Steve Canyon, and actors like Jimmy Stewart played key roles in the unfolding campaign. Movies like Twelve O'Clock High!, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, and A Gathering of Eagles projected onto the public imagination vivid images confirming what was coming to be the accepted wisdom: that America's safety against the Soviet threat could best be guaranteed by air power, coupled with nuclear capability. But as the Cold War continued and the specter of the mushroom cloud grew more prominent in American minds, another, more sinister interpretation began to take hold. Call chronicles the shift away from the heroic, patriotic posture of the years just after World War II, toward the threatening, even bizarre imagery of books and movies like Catch-22, On the Beach, and Dr. Strangelove. Call's careful analysis goes beyond the public relations campaigns to probe the intellectual climate that shaped them and gave them power. Selling Air Power adds a critical layer of understanding to studies in military and aviation history, as well as American popular culture.

Download or read book The American Culture of War written by Adrian R. Lewis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 767 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its third edition, The American Culture of War presents a sweeping critical examination of every major American war since 1941: World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the First and Second Persian Gulf Wars, U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the war against ISIS. As he carefully considers the cultural forces that surrounded each military engagement, Adrian Lewis offers an original and provocative look at the motives, people and governments used to wage war, the discord among military personnel, the flawed political policies that guided military strategy, and the civilian perceptions that characterized each conflict. This third edition features: A new structure focused more exclusively on the character and conduct of the wars themselves Updates to account for the latest, evolving scholarship on these conflicts An updated account of American military involvement in the Middle East, including the abrupt rise of ISIS The new edition of The American Culture of War remains a comprehensive and essential resource for any student of American wartime conduct.

Download or read book Attack on Pearl Harbor written by Alan D. Zimm and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2013-10-19 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ÒNothing previously published has offered such a close examination of Japanese strategy . . . an in-depth study of the Japanese planning, preparation and execution of the attack with particular focus on factors not thoroughly considered by other historians, if at all . . . detailed analyses that lead to a much better understanding of what the Japanese did, why they did it, and especially how the attack was very nearly an abject failure instead of a stunning success."ÑNaval Institute Proceedings "For seven decades, conventional wisdom has extolled the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as brilliant in its planning and execution . . . this masterful analysis topples that pillar of Pacific War history . . . with its amazing depth of meticulous research and analysis, this forceful book is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in Pearl Harbor."ÑWorld War II "The first militarily professional description of the Pearl Harbor attack, and for those who are serious about military history and operations, it is a joy to read. . . . a superb military analysis of the attack . . . not only renders all other histories of Pearl Harbor obsolete, it has set the bar high for other histories of the Pacific War."ÑWar In History

Download or read book Mass Destruction written by Timothy J. LeCain and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The place: The steep mountains outside Salt Lake City. The time: The first decade of the twentieth century. The man: Daniel Jackling, a young metallurgical engineer. The goal: A bold new technology that could provide billions of pounds of cheap copper for a rapidly electrifying America. The result: Bingham's enormous "Glory Hole," the first large-scale open-pit copper mine, an enormous chasm in the earth and one of the largest humanmade artifacts on the planet. Mass Destruction is the compelling story of Jackling and the development of open-pit hard rock mining, its role in the wiring of an electrified America, as well its devastating environmental consequences. Mass destruction mining soon spread around the nation and the globe, providing raw materials essential to the mass production and mass consumption that increasingly defined the emerging "American way of life." At the dawn of the last century, Jackling's open pit replaced immense but constricted underground mines that probed nearly a mile beneath the earth, to become the ultimate symbol of the modern faith that science and technology could overcome all natural limits. A new culture of mass destruction emerged that promised nearly infinite supplies not only of copper, but also of coal, timber, fish, and other natural resources. But, what were the consequences? Timothy J. LeCain deftly analyzes how open-pit mining continues to affect the environment in its ongoing devastation of nature and commodification of the physical world. The nation's largest toxic Superfund site would be one effect, as well as other types of environmental dead zones around the globe. Yet today, as the world's population races toward American levels of resource consumption, truly viable alternatives to the technology of mass destruction have not yet emerged.

Download or read book Warfare in the Western World 1882 1975 written by Jeremy Black and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this companion volume to "Western Warfare, 1775-1882," Jeremy Black takes his analysis of modern warfare into the twentieth century. As before, a distinctive feature of the author's approach is the coverage of both land and naval warfare as well as conflict within the West and between Western and non-Western powers. Beginning with the British conquest of Egypt in 1882, this book goes on to examine the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Boer War and the Balkan conflicts leading to world war in 1914. A revisionist account of the First World War is followed by a discussion of Western expansionism in the period to 1936. Chapters on the interwar years and the Second World War lead on to a discussion of the retreat from empire and the advent of Cold War. The narrative closes with the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and a discussion of the limitations of Western military technique, doctrine and technology. Throughout, the themes of military change and modernization are brought into sharp focus and the revolutionary characteristics of the machination of war in this period are questioned. Jeremy Black offers a new and challenging interpretation of modern warfare that will be required reading not only for students of military history but for all those interested in the impact of war in the making of the modern world.

Download or read book Global Communications Since 1844 written by Peter J. Hugill and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1999-04-09 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He traces the steps that led to the British surrender of world hegemony to the United States at the end of World War II.

Download or read book A Global Chronology of Conflict 6 volumes written by Spencer C. Tucker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-12-23 with total page 3127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monumental six-volume resource offers engaging entries of major diplomatic, military, and political events driving world conflicts from ancient times to the present. Now from ABC-CLIO, long regarded as a premier publisher of military history, comes a monumental resource that encapsulates the entire scope of conflict among human societies. Spanning nearly five millennia, from the earliest documented fighting to the present, A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East, provides a comprehensive survey of major military events. With coverage that reaches beyond the battles, this work examines the political and diplomatic forces driving world conflicts, revolutions, forced changes of governments, international treaties, and acts of aggression and terrorism. Written by acclaimed military historian Spencer C. Tucker, these six chronologically organized volumes offer an accessible, richly detailed timeline of military conflict across human history. The concise entries cover all important events on the battlefield and in the corridors of power, with special features highlighting hundreds of key leaders and weapon systems. From specific data on casualties to coverage of evolving weapons technology to insightful analyses of the social impact of war, A Global Chronology of Conflict is an essential resource for students, researchers, history buffs, and general readers alike.

Download or read book War in the American Pacific and East Asia 1941 1972 written by Hal M. Friedman and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-02-22 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before 1940, the Japanese empire stood as the greatest single threat to the American presence in the Pacific and East Asia. To a lesser degree, the formerly hegemonic colonial powers of Britain, France, and the Netherlands still controlled portions of the region. At the same time, subjugated peoples in East Asia and Southeast Asia struggled to throw off colonialism. By the late 1930s, the competition exploded into armed conflict. Japan looked like the early victor, but the United States eventually established itself as the hegemonic power in the Pacific Basin by 1945. Yet when it comes to the American movement out into the Pacific, there is more to the story that has yet to be revealed. In War in the American Pacific and East Asia, 1941–1972, editor Hal Friedman brings together nine essays that explore lesser known aspects and consequences of America's military expansion into the Pacific during and after World War II. This study explores how the United States won the Pacific War against Japan and how it sought to secure that victory in the decades that followed, ensure it never endured another Pearl Harbor–style defeat, and saw the Pacific fulfill a Manifest Destiny–like role as an American frontier projected toward East Asia. The collection explores the role of the US military in the Pacific Basin in different ways by presenting essays on interservice rivalry and military advising as well as unique topics that are new to military history, such as the investigations of strategic communications, military public relations, institutional cultures of elite forces, foodways, and the military's interaction with the press. Together, these essays provide a path for historians to pursue groundbreaking areas of research about the Pacific and establish the Pacific War as the pivotal point in the twentieth century in the Pacific Basin.