Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare

The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945

Tami Biddle (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

416 Seiten

2002
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-08909-6 (ISBN)

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This title examines how Anglo-American ideas about long range bombing were formed and implemented. It explains how air theorists came to believe that strategic bombing would be an effective coercive tool in warfare.

A 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 the ideas about bombing civilian targets rested on - and gained validity from - widespread but erroneous assumptions about the nature of modern industrial societies and their vulrability to aerial bombardment. These assumptions were derived from the social and political context of the day and maintained largely through cognitive error and bias. Tami Davis Biddle analyses how a particluar interpretation of World War I experience, together with airmen's organizational interests, shaped interwar debates about strategic bombing and preserved conceptions of its potenitally revolutionary character. This flawed interpretation as well as failure to anticipate implementation problems, were revealed as World War II commenced. By then, British and Americans had invested heavily in strategic bombing. They saw little choice but to try and solve the problems in real time and make long-range bombing as effective as possible.
Combining narrative with analysis, this book presents a comparative history of British and American strateg

Tami Davis Biddle is Assistant Professor of History at Duke and a core faculty member of the Duke-University of North Carolina Joint Program in Military History.

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter One The Beginning: Strategic Bombing in the First World War 11 Chapter Two Britain in the Interwar Years 69 Chapter Three The United States in the Interwar Years 128 Chapter Four Rhetoric and Reality, 1939-1942 176 Chapter Five The Combined Bomber Offensive, 1943-1945 214 Conclusion 289 Notes 303 Bibliography of Archival Sources 387 Index 391

Reihe/Serie	Princeton Studies in International History and Politics
Verlagsort	New Jersey
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 235 mm
Gewicht	482 g
Themenwelt	Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe ► Militärfahrzeuge / -flugzeuge / -schiffe
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
ISBN-10	0-691-08909-4 / 0691089094
ISBN-13	978-0-691-08909-6 / 9780691089096
Zustand	Neuware