A HISTORY OF AIR POWER. - Hardcover

Collier, Basil.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0025271709 ISBN 13: 9780025271708

Publisher: Purnell, 1974

Synopsis

Wilbur and Orville Wright believed, when early in the present century they produced the first practical man-carrying powered aeroplane, that their invention would 'make further wars practically impossible'. It has not. Basil Collier traces the increasingly destructive history of the seventy years of air power from this false dawn to the spectacular and agonizing failures in Vietnam. In the First World War attempts by both sides to gain freedom for their aircraft to reconnoitre the enemy's lines gave rise to the concept of a struggle for air supremacy. Forecasts of bomb devastation were wildly overstated - in 1924 it was estimated that 27,000 people would be killed in London in one month. The heart of the book comes with the Second World War when theory gave way to practice, which in turn caused changes both in the thinking behind their use and in the machines themselves. Even so airpower remains considerably less decisive than expected. It was predicted, when Communist forces invaded South Korea in 1950, that the aggressors would lay down their arms as soon as the United States Fifth Air Force went to work on them. Yet neither in Korea3 nor later in Vietnam, did massive air power enable its possessors to impose their will. Sober and factual rather than polemical, Basil Collier's account allows the facts to speak for themselves and does not gloss over the mistakes of airmen who, by claiming more for air power than it was capable of performing, have repeatedly and disastrously misled their governments.

About this edition

• Publisher: Purnell
• Publication date: 1974
• ISBN 10: 0025271709
• ISBN 13: 9780025271708
• Binding: Hardcover