Reviews for Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943-45

The average rating for Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943-45 based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-08-11 00:00:00 Robert Garofalo First, the short version… Death from the Heavens: A History of Strategic Bombing by Dr. Kenneth P. Werrell is a study of warfare waged on the homelands of the combatants rather than their forces' positions on a given battlefield. The differences are scope (opponent's homeland versus local battlefield) and goals (total society involvment versus individual battlefield gains/losses). The winner of the battlefield skirmish lives to fight another day on another battlefield, while the winner of the strategic conflict potentially can end the war in its tracks by destroying the means to produce, the means to transport, and the means to keep a country fighting in conflicts possibly far removed from their homeland. Werrell's position is that strategic air operations have never completely lived up to the hyperbole of the theorists for the power of aviation in a larger, strategic sense. It is clear that theorists had some lofty expectations of the capabilities of large bomber aircraft that could indiscriminately unload death and destruction from the relative safety of altitude, the relative plenty of a large hold full of lethal explosive devices, and the ubiquitous maelstrom of lead spat from the muzzles of modern machine guns. The theorists' ivory towers did not take into account inaccurate bomb sights, carpets of antiaircraft artillery in and (more especially around) the targets of interest. The theorists' views also missed the possibility that fighters could be designed to fly faster, with identical machine guns and cannons or heavier ordnance, and higher levels of manueverability, all relative to the lumbering, large and relatively stable bombers. It is equally clear that theorists writing their treatises in the lull between World Wars I and II were unable to keep up with the changing techologies that were operating in the interlude between the wars. The result was an expectation of what air power could do in a strategic setting without taking into account the facts that interdiction of the strategic invaders would be met with the best technologies to thwart the threats they presented. Even the advent of larger and more powerful devices of destruction could not enable aircraft alone to win wars. The warfare in Europe was only the first act of a far more destructive war that raged concurrently between the Empire of Japan and the Allies, mostly the United States, Australia, and to a lesser extent, Great Britain. The strategic war against Japan was waged more in the latter days of 1944 and 1945 when bases were contested on islands close enough to the Japanese home islands so that the newest American bombers would be within range of the latest in bombers, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Strategic bombing against Japan took on different scales as the war intensified, with an emphasis on using a combination of high explosive and incendiary ordnance since Japanese cities had large amounts of combustible materials used in building construction. The results of the combination of payloads resulted in devastatng firestorms which caused destruction measured in square miles of blackened and charred ruins, with casualty figures to match the horrific firestorms engendered as the result of the bombardment. Only the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could come close to a similar result with the lasting effects of radioactive fallout and deaths measured over years of duration and in the tens of thousands with lingering, long term illnesses and shortened lifespans. In the years after the two major world wars, America and the Soviet Union squared off was adversaries where they had been Allies during World War II as well as most of World War I as Czarist Russia. Now, though, with the aid of internal espionage agents, the Soviet Union deployed atomic weapons of its own and follow the early 1950's development of thermonuclear devices in America with similar devices of their own less than a decade later with larger yeilds and concommitant devastation. At first, bombers were considered the best delivery vehicles, but as time went by, the bombers were augmented first by land-based and then by submarine based ballistic missiles. Soon it was clear that the missile forces of the two superpowers were sufficient to render most life in the Northern Hemisphere of the planet at risk in the event of a thermonuclear exchange between the powers, with a high likelihood that the devastation in the form of fallout and nuclear winter could effect the entire planet wiping out the human race and most other forms of life as well.The resulting arms race ran for several decades until the Soviet Union effectively crumbled under the weight of armaments costs coupled with other fiscal issues which resulted in a governmental collapse and restructuring outside of the models of Marx and Lenin. With this change in power, the threat of massive nuclear exchanges was reduced to the possibility of the use of limited nuclear exchange still a possibility but much less likely as a result of a world war but more likely the action of either a rogue state or unconventional warfare such as that waged by terrorist organizations. Now, with the advent of stealth technologies, precision guided munitions, and cruise missiles, the use of strategic bombers has been relegated to smaller, more agile platforms where multiple targets can be prosecuted by attack and fighter/bomber aircraft without risking the larger bombers to direct attack in limited war scenarios. Essentially, what is happening is that the bombers are being used in fewer strategic scenarios and more as large, loitering tactical aircraft. While the larger bombers have intercontinental ranges, with their stand-off cruise missiles they can strike from several countries away from the targets at which they direct their smart ordnance. As it stands now, according to Dr. Werrell, there is very little that a large bomber can do that can't be handled cheaper, faster, and just as (if not more) stealthy as modern attack / fighter-bomber aircraft with much less invested in the mission in terms of aircrew, national treasure, and ultra sophisticated electronic and stealth technology. The days of the bomber are probably numbered as they are planes with no real mission other than one of support for limited warfare some times, but not always. Death from the heavens now is more precisely delivered from fewer, cheaper, and less crew heavy platforms, resulting in economies of scale, precision, and risk, all of which are more limited in smaller airframes. Recommendations for readers: any one who can understand the vocabulary should consider this book as very informative, highly approachable, and concise for a look at almost a century and a quarter of airpower, its uses in the past, its changing mission for the future, and its reducing reliance on the large bomber in favor of smaller, cheaper, and equally as capable aircraft. Parental guidance is recommended below middle school level, Grades 5 and down, but the material and the pictures make this book readable by most of us. I highly recommend it for its balanced approach with solid and numerous references to excellent sources. �

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-13 00:00:00 Shane Flood For a book with just passages this novel was well put together. I liked the overall idea of it, but it couldn't catch an interest like other books can. If your looking for a drier book with many facts this book is good for you