Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare
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A01=Tami Biddle
Aerial bombing
Aerial warfare
Aerodrome
Air Corps (Ireland)
Air Corps Tactical School
Air force
Air Ministry
Air offensive
Air Staff (United Kingdom)
Air Staff (United States)
Air supremacy
Aircraft
Airman
Airstrike
and operations
Army
Author_Tami Biddle
Aviation
B. H. Liddell Hart
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress
Bomb
Bomber
Bomber Command
Bombsight
Butt Report
Calculation
Category=JWCM
Category=JWM
Chief of staff
Close air support
Combined Bomber Offensive
Disarmament
Dislocation
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Escort fighter
European theatre of World War II
German Air Force
Grand strategy
Heavy bomber
Henry H. Arnold
Incendiary device
Independent Air Force
Interdiction
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Lecture
Luftwaffe
Maintenance
Military
Military history
Military organization
Military tactics
Morale
Navy
Norden bombsight
On War
Precision bombing
Reconnaissance
repair
Reprisal
Requirement
Secretary of State for Air
Squadron (aviation)
Staff college
Strategic bomber
Strategic bombing
Troop
United States Air Force
United States Army Air Forces
Vulnerability
War
War economy
War effort
Warfare
Weapon
World War I
World War II
Product details
- ISBN 9780691120102
- Weight: 567g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 19 Sep 2004
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A major revision of our understanding of long-range bombing, this book examines how Anglo-American ideas about "strategic" bombing were formed and implemented. It argues that ideas about bombing civilian targets rested on--and gained validity from--widespread but substantially erroneous assumptions about the nature of modern industrial societies and their vulnerability to aerial bombardment. These assumptions were derived from the social and political context of the day and were maintained largely through cognitive error and bias. Tami Davis Biddle explains how air theorists, and those influenced by them, came to believe that strategic bombing would be an especially effective coercive tool and how they responded when their assumptions were challenged. Biddle analyzes how a particular interpretation of the World War I experience, together with airmen's organizational interests, shaped interwar debates about strategic bombing and preserved conceptions of its potentially revolutionary character. This flawed interpretation as well as a failure to anticipate implementation problems were revealed as World War II commenced.
By then, the British and Americans had invested heavily in strategic bombing. They saw little choice but to try to solve the problems in real time and make long-range bombing as effective as possible. Combining narrative with analysis, this book presents the first-ever comparative history of British and American strategic bombing from its origins through 1945. In examining the ideas and rhetoric on which strategic bombing depended, it offers critical insights into the validity and robustness of those ideas--not only as they applied to World War II but as they apply to contemporary warfare.
Tami Davis Biddle is Associate Professor of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College. She teaches military and diplomatic history, national security policy, and grand strategy. Her research focuses on the evolution of military ideas, and their implementation as strategies for national defense and methods of warfighting.
