How Effective is Strategic Bombing?
Lessons Learned From World War II to Kosovo
Publication Year: 2001
In the wake of World War II, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and President Harry S. Truman established the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, to determine exactly how effectively strategic air power had been applied in the European theater and in the Pacific. The final study, consisting of over 330 separate reports and annexes, was staggering in its size and emphatic in its conclusions. As such it has for decades been used as an objective primary source and a guiding text, a veritable Bible for historians of air power.
In this aggressively revisionist volume, Gian Gentile examines afresh this influential document to reveal how it reflected to its very foundation the American conceptual approach to strategic bombing. In the process, he exposes the survey as largely tautological and thereby throwing into question many of the central tenets of American air power philosophy and strategy.
With a detailed chapter on the Gulf War and the resulting Gulf War Air Power Survey, and a concluding chapter on the lessons of the Kosovo air war, How Effective is Strategic Bombing? is the most comprehensive and important book on air power strategy in decades.
Published by: NYU Press
How Effective is Strategic Bombing?
Contents
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pp. v
Acknowledgments
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pp. vii-ix
British historian Eric Hobsbawm noted that a person can make a contribution to historical knowledge if he or she has the “capacity for very hard work and some detective ingenuity.” While researching and writing this book I have had the capacity to work hard, yet without the patient mentoring ...
Introduction
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pp. 1-9
Air power has been one of the most controversial issues for American defense policy since it first came into being as a military force in the early part of the twentieth century. Moreover, a certain component of American air power— strategic bombing—has been especially controversial. Pundits have ...
Chapter 1: The Origins of the American Conceptual Approach to Strategic Bombing and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey
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pp. 10-32
In his 1921 book The Command of the Air, Italian air power theorist Guilio Douhet argued that once strategic bombers had achieved command of the air, they could quickly force an enemy into submission by dropping bombs on key targets in its cities.1 But he only loosely defined those targets, and ...
Chapter 2: The United States Strategic Bombing Survey and the Future of the Air Force
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pp. 33-53
Establishing the facts that proved the effectiveness of American air power in World War II would lay the foundation for a postwar independent air force. Senior AAF leaders like Major General Laurence Kuter, the assistant chief of staff for plans, therefore, committed themselves to proving the efficacy of air ...
Chapter 3: The Evaluation of Strategic Bombing against Germany
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pp. 54-78
At a Survey directors’ meeting on 1 April 1945, Franklin D’Olier expressed his amazement that the “Air Corps should have given us this job with no qualifications . . . at no time has there been the slightest inclination to interfere with us. They want us to find out what the facts are from an absolutely ...
Chapter 4: The Survey Presents Its Findings from Europe and Develops an Alternate Strategic Bombing Plan for Japan
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pp. 79-103
Following the publication of the chairman’s European Summary Report and Overall Report, Henry Alexander held a press conference at the Pentagon on 24 October 1945 to pass out copies of both studies and to answer questions from newspaper reporters about the Survey. During the conference ...
Chapter 5: The Evaluation of Strategic Bombing against Japan
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pp. 104-130
After spending three months in Japan from October to December 1945 evaluating the effects of strategic bombing on Japan’s wartime economy and its political decision to surrender, Paul Nitze briefed members of the Senate Committee on Atomic Energy about the Survey’s findings from the Pacific ...
Chapter 6: A-Bombs, Budgets, and the Dilemma of Defense
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pp. 131-166
Anticipating his “new job” as chief of staff of the United States Air Force, General Carl A. Spaatz forcefully emphasized to the about-to-be-named secretary of the air force, W. Stuart Symington, that they must “obliterate” any opposition to the air force’s plans for the postwar defense establishment.1
Chapter 7: A Comparison of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey with the Gulf War Air Power Survey
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pp. 167-190
After World War II, Bernard Brodie and other defense analysts read, and often used, many of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) conclusions in their postwar writings on military strategy and defense policy and organization. The Survey’s published studies provided postwar analysts ...
Afterword
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pp. 191-194
Six years after the GWAPS completed its study of air power in the Gulf War, the United States led a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air campaign in the Balkans against Yugoslavia. The apparent aim of the campaign was to force the Yugoslavian president, Slobodan Milosevic, to stop the ...
Notes
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pp. 195-250
Bibliography
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pp. 251-266
Index
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pp. 267-274
About the Author
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pp. 275
Gian P. Gentile is an active duty army officer who holds a B.A. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Stanford University, and an M.M.A.S. from the School of Advanced Military Studies. He has served in command and staff positions in armored ...
E-ISBN-13: 9780814733318
E-ISBN-10: 081473331X
Print-ISBN-13: 9780814731352
Print-ISBN-10: 081473135X
Page Count: 286
Publication Year: 2001
