| Physical description |
x, 518 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 485-499) and index. |
| Contents |
Part 1 Kitty Hawk to Saint-Mihiel, 1900-1918 -- 1. Visions 3 -- 2. Bogeymen 32 -- 3. Realities 55 -- 4. Grand Plans 90 -- Part 2 Versailles to Madrid, 1919-1939 -- 5. Lessons Learned and Mislearned 125 -- 6. Quest for Precision 153 -- 7. Fight for the Fighter 184 -- Part 3 Warsaw to Nagasaki, 1939-1945 -- 8. Finest Hour 219 -- 9. Air Versus Sea 255 -- 10. Temporary Triumph of Tactical Aviation 281 -- 11. Allied Bomber Offensive 308 -- Part 4 Omaha to Baghdad, 1946-2003 -- 12. Strategic Air Command 345 -- 13. Hard Knocks 376 -- 14. Precision, at Last 406. |
| Summary |
Even Before the Wright Brothers' First Flight, predictions abounded of the devastating and terrible consequences this new invention would have as an engine of war. Soaring over the battlefield and the men in the trenches, the airplane would be an unstoppable force, leaving no spot on earth safe from attack. The very nature of war would be changed forever. Less than a decade after Kitty Hawk, airplanes were dropping bombs in colonial wars. By the end of World War I, every combat role that aircraft would ever perform had been tried: dogfighting, strategic bombing, battlefield attack, even spy missions and leaflet drops. Yet the grand visions and the great expectations for air power that had so seized the imaginations of airmen and the public alike would for decades remain far removed from the grim realities of war and the prosaic limitations of technologies. |
|
By the end of the first century of flight, warplanes would at last fulfill their mythic promise, as air power brought crushing precision, speed, and lethality to the battlefield in the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan. But that achievement would require both new inventions and new thinking that boldly challenged air force orthodoxy -- above all, the deeply entrenched myth of the bomber's omnipotence that even the repeated bitter and costly experience of war had failed to shake. This epic history draws on combat memoirs, letters, and diaries; archival records and museum collections; and eyewitness accounts by the men who fought -- and the men who developed the breakthrough inventions and concepts -- to weave a vivid and dramatic account of the airplane's revolutionary transformation of modern warfare. |
| Subject |
Air power -- History.
|
|
Aeronautics, Military -- History.
|
| ISBN |
0670032859 (acid-free paper) |
|
