Why Air Forces Fail; The Anatomy of Defeat

382 pages. Illustrations. List of Contributors, Index. Robin David Stewart Higham (June 20, 1925 - August 27, 2015) was a British-American historian, specializing in aerospace and military history, who also served as a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Higham received a Ph.D. in 1957 from Harvard with a dissertation on the development of aviation in Great Britain. For the next six years, until 1963, he was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, where he was co-founder of the National Security Seminar of Duke University and. University of North Carolina. In 1963, he became a professor at Kansas State University. He became professor emeritus there in 1999. Though he described himself as a "historical generalist" in a 1998 interview, Higham's primary publications were on the subject of aeronautics, especially military-scientific aspects.[ He did, however, also write extensively on geopolitics in general. In 1977, he founded Sunflower University Press, which existed until 2005 and published books on military science and military history. He was editor of Military Affairs (now The Journal of Military History) from 1968 to 1988 and of Aerospace Historian from 1970 to 1988. He was also the editor of the Journal of the West beginning in 1976. Stephen J. Harris is the chief historian for the Directorate of History and Heritage at the National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, Canada. He coauthored The Crucible of War: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force. According to Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris, "Flight has been part of the human dream for aeons, and its military application has likely been the dark side of that dream for almost as long." In the twentieth century, this dream and its dark side unfolded as the air forces of the world went to war, bringing destruction and reassessment with each failure. Why Air Forces Fail examines the complex, often deep-seated, reasons for the catastrophic failures of the air forces of various nations. Higham and Harris divide the air forces into three categories of defeat: forces that never had a chance to win, such as Poland and France; forces that started out victorious but were ultimately defeated, such as Germany and Japan; and finally, those that were defeated in their early efforts yet rose to victory, such as the air forces of Britain and the United States. The contributing authors examine the complex causes of defeats of the Russian, Polish, French, Arab, British, Italian, German, Argentine, and American air services. In all cases, the failures stemmed from deep, usually prewar factors that were shaped by the political, economic, military, and social circumstances in the countries. Defeat also stemmed from the anticipation of future wars, early wartime actions, and the precarious relationship between the doctrine of the military leadership and its execution in the field. Anthony Christopher Cain's chapter on France's air force, l'Armée de l'Air, attributes France's loss to Germany in June 1940 to a lack of preparation and investment in the air force. One major problem was the failure to centralize planning or coordinate a strategy between land and air forces, which was compounded by aborted alliances between France and countries in eastern Europe, especially Poland and Czechoslovakia. In addition, the lack of incentives for design innovation in air technologies led to clashes between airplane manufacturers, laborers, and the government, a struggle that resulted in France's airplanes' being outnumbered by Germany's more than three to one by 1940. Complemented by reading lists and suggestions for further research, Why Air Forces Fail provides groundbreaking studies of the causes of air force defeats.