The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon

Rating:
Summary: The First Book To Seriously Examine Air Warfare
Review: Michael Sherry is the first author to seriously examine strategic air warfare and how it is influenced by politics, military tactics, the formulation of a coherent air strategy, popular culture, morality, racism, and the media to name just a few factors. Sherry describes how the U.S. Air Force never formulated an effective air strategy to compel the unconditional surrender of its enemies during World War II. The primary reason cited by Sherry was the false perception of air power being able to completely overwhelm its enemies through the Douhet concept of bombers striking a decisive blow, thereby forcing a countries enemies to capitulate. This resulted in the formulation of U.S. air strategy to become stagnate. This book should be required reading for military pilots and aviators attending the Air War College at Maxwell AFB.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but there are flaws
Review: The Rise of American Airpower by Michael Sherry represents the new breed of military history. This book is about the physical, organizational and technological advances which affected the United States armed forces in peace and in war. It is not a record of the battles and campaigns of World War Two. This is a cultural history which seeks to explain the rise of strategic air war. Sherry set before himself the massive task of understanding how humans could delude themselves to the point where they could seriously consider the horrors of conventional mass bombardment and later nuclear warfare as an abstract idea.
Sherry identifies three related developments which his study should address. These are the creation of the apocalyptic mentality, the creation of an apparatus for realizing that danger, and the creation of the modern nuclear dilemma. Sherry decided to limit his dealings with nuclear warfare and deal with that last issue primarily in comparison to the first two issues. What Sherry is after is an understanding of the bomber in the imagination of the American public before and during World War Two. He believes that to understand wartime developments one needs to know the story of the rise of American airpower and perception of bombers and bombing in the popular imagination. He suggests that after WWI aircraft became inextricably linked to civilian uses. Airplanes were immediately familiar in their civilian role and had practical peacetime applications. Sherry suggests that these factors resulted in the imagined use of the bomber often outpacing the practical realities of actual bombing. According to Sherry, "the warplane was created in imagination before it was invented as a practical weapon." In this way Sherry focused his study of the social and cultural history to explain the rise of American airpower.
Sherry arranged this book in a generally chronological format with ten chapters. The chapter titles almost tell the story themselves, they are "The Age of Fantasy", "The Age of Prophecy", "The Decline of Danger", "The Attractions of Intimidation", "From Intimidation to Annihilation", "The Dynamics of Escalation", " The Sociology of Air War", "The Sources of Technological Fanaticism", "The Triumphs of Technological Fanaticism", "The Persistence of Apocalyptic Fantasy". Although he occasionally deviates from a strict chronology, the primary diversion from the format is the chapter on "The Sociology of Air War". In this chapter he looks at the actors, the generals, civilian expert advocates and aircrews of the bomber forces.
In his opening chapter, "The Age of Fantasy", Sherry starts not with a direct examination of the airplane, but an examination of the popular civilian perceptions regarding technological advances in warfare during the nineteenth century. This is the base upon which his later arguments rest, and I believe that it is a solid base. Sherry notes that the airplane was "like a host of other weapons invented or imagined in the nineteenth century and celebrated for their capacity to diminish the `evils of war'." Sherry points to the writings of such well known people as Jack London and Victor Hugo as evidence of this social phenomena. In fact, as early as 1864 Hugo stated that airplanes would make armies "vanish, and with them the whole business of war, exploitation and subjugation". Others made similar claims for Tri-Nitro Tolulene (TNT), the machine-gun, and the large caliber artillery piece.
These claims and perceptions did not end with the nineteenth century, rather they accelerated prior to the First World War. Civilian theorists exaggerated the destructiveness of new weapons so that they might inflate their power to keep the peace. Sherry also draws a link between the nature of nineteenth century war and the popular perceptions. In the civilian imagination wars were short, and although bloody for a few days, relatively cheap. (The American Civil War was generally overlooked or seen as an aberration.) They took this as substantive evidence that their theories were correct. These two factors combined to lay the groundwork for consideration of air bombardment of civilian population centers. Their logic suggested that if war was inevitable, then a short war is best. The best way to have a short war is to use terrible weapons quickly and be done with the matter. With these thoughts in mind the world entered WWI.
Sherry deals only briefly with World War One, but the treatment is important. It is important not for what was learned, but for what the world did not learn from the first war involving significant numbers of aircraft. During World War One both Germany and Great Britain experimented with the first strategic bombing raids. These raids were not the result of military theories regarding civilian production and demoralization. They occurred as a series of raids then reprisals motivated by popular civilian demand for vengeance on both sides. No specific targets beyond "the enemy" were sought or targeted, hatred was the primary motive in a Europe locked in a stalemated war. The lesson that was missed was that bombing civilian population centers does not necessarily result in panic, chaos and surrender.
During the 1920's America and Europe underwent what Sherry calls "The Age of Prophecy" with regard to military aviation theory. The two most significant events of this period were the 1921 sinking of a battleship by Colonel Billy Mitchell and the 1927 solo trans-Atlantic flight by Charles Lindbergh. Sherry sees these two events as uniting to form, in the American national psyche, a positive opinion towards aircraft as expressions of individualism in the wake of mass warfare. Americans, a people that had never been bombed from the air, saw aircraft as marvelous inventions. They tied grand prophecies to the powers of these machines. Together, the effects of cultural imagination and prophecy formed in the American mind a benign image of the airplane. From that image Americans began to see the bomber in a similar light, powerful yet somehow detached from the actual horror that they could potentially inflict. Sherry claims that in this way the military theories and forces required to actually conduct a bombing campaign advanced faster than any debate on the legality or morality of doing so.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but there are flaws
Review: The Rise of American Airpower by Michael Sherry represents the new breed of military history. This book is about the physical, organizational and technological advances which affected the United States armed forces in peace and in war. It is not a record of the battles and campaigns of World War Two. This is a cultural history which seeks to explain the rise of strategic air war. Sherry set before himself the massive task of understanding how humans could delude themselves to the point where they could seriously consider the horrors of conventional mass bombardment and later nuclear warfare as an abstract idea.
Sherry identifies three related developments which his study should address. These are the creation of the apocalyptic mentality, the creation of an apparatus for realizing that danger, and the creation of the modern nuclear dilemma. Sherry decided to limit his dealings with nuclear warfare and deal with that last issue primarily in comparison to the first two issues. What Sherry is after is an understanding of the bomber in the imagination of the American public before and during World War Two. He believes that to understand wartime developments one needs to know the story of the rise of American airpower and perception of bombers and bombing in the popular imagination. He suggests that after WWI aircraft became inextricably linked to civilian uses. Airplanes were immediately familiar in their civilian role and had practical peacetime applications. Sherry suggests that these factors resulted in the imagined use of the bomber often outpacing the practical realities of actual bombing. According to Sherry, "the warplane was created in imagination before it was invented as a practical weapon." In this way Sherry focused his study of the social and cultural history to explain the rise of American airpower.
Sherry arranged this book in a generally chronological format with ten chapters. The chapter titles almost tell the story themselves, they are "The Age of Fantasy", "The Age of Prophecy", "The Decline of Danger", "The Attractions of Intimidation", "From Intimidation to Annihilation", "The Dynamics of Escalation", " The Sociology of Air War", "The Sources of Technological Fanaticism", "The Triumphs of Technological Fanaticism", "The Persistence of Apocalyptic Fantasy". Although he occasionally deviates from a strict chronology, the primary diversion from the format is the chapter on "The Sociology of Air War". In this chapter he looks at the actors, the generals, civilian expert advocates and aircrews of the bomber forces.
In his opening chapter, "The Age of Fantasy", Sherry starts not with a direct examination of the airplane, but an examination of the popular civilian perceptions regarding technological advances in warfare during the nineteenth century. This is the base upon which his later arguments rest, and I believe that it is a solid base. Sherry notes that the airplane was "like a host of other weapons invented or imagined in the nineteenth century and celebrated for their capacity to diminish the 'evils of war'." Sherry points to the writings of such well known people as Jack London and Victor Hugo as evidence of this social phenomena. In fact, as early as 1864 Hugo stated that airplanes would make armies "vanish, and with them the whole business of war, exploitation and subjugation". Others made similar claims for Tri-Nitro Tolulene (TNT), the machine-gun, and the large caliber artillery piece.
These claims and perceptions did not end with the nineteenth century, rather they accelerated prior to the First World War. Civilian theorists exaggerated the destructiveness of new weapons so that they might inflate their power to keep the peace. Sherry also draws a link between the nature of nineteenth century war and the popular perceptions. In the civilian imagination wars were short, and although bloody for a few days, relatively cheap. (The American Civil War was generally overlooked or seen as an aberration.) They took this as substantive evidence that their theories were correct. These two factors combined to lay the groundwork for consideration of air bombardment of civilian population centers. Their logic suggested that if war was inevitable, then a short war is best. The best way to have a short war is to use terrible weapons quickly and be done with the matter. With these thoughts in mind the world entered WWI.
Sherry deals only briefly with World War One, but the treatment is important. It is important not for what was learned, but for what the world did not learn from the first war involving significant numbers of aircraft. During World War One both Germany and Great Britain experimented with the first strategic bombing raids. These raids were not the result of military theories regarding civilian production and demoralization. They occurred as a series of raids then reprisals motivated by popular civilian demand for vengeance on both sides. No specific targets beyond "the enemy" were sought or targeted, hatred was the primary motive in a Europe locked in a stalemated war. The lesson that was missed was that bombing civilian population centers does not necessarily result in panic, chaos and surrender.
During the 1920's America and Europe underwent what Sherry calls "The Age of Prophecy" with regard to military aviation theory. The two most significant events of this period were the 1921 sinking of a battleship by Colonel Billy Mitchell and the 1927 solo trans-Atlantic flight by Charles Lindbergh. Sherry sees these two events as uniting to form, in the American national psyche, a positive opinion towards aircraft as expressions of individualism in the wake of mass warfare. Americans, a people that had never been bombed from the air, saw aircraft as marvelous inventions. They tied grand prophecies to the powers of these machines. Together, the effects of cultural imagination and prophecy formed in the American mind a benign image of the airplane. From that image Americans began to see the bomber in a similar light, powerful yet somehow detached from the actual horror that they could potentially inflict. Sherry claims that in this way the military theories and forces required to actually conduct a bombing campaign advanced faster than any debate on the legality or morality of doing so.