The Influence of Air Power upon History
Walter J. Boyne. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2003. 447 pp. Bib. Index. $29.95.
Reviewed by Hill Goodspeed
Marking the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' epic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, this year brings a spate of books commemorating the event and examining how the airplane has changed our world. Drawing his book's title from Alfred Thayer Mahan's landmark work on sea power, Walter J. Boyne, a former director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, examines how air power has influenced history during the past century. Though there are summaries of famous air engagements, the author seeks to move beyond the battlefield, writing that air power has "affected the direction of national policies, the growth of industries, and perhaps most important, the rapid advance of technology, even in times of peace."
It is widely accepted that World War I was a proving ground for aviation, and the first section of The Influence of Air Power upon History covers the personalities and aircraft that shaped the employment of airplanes and dirigibles by the opposing powers. The author calls aerial reconnaissance the most important function of air power in the Great War, and provides an account of its pivotal influence on the execution of the Schlieffen Plan during the war's early days. He also introduces the main players for the remainder of the book-fighters and bombers-and the evolution of thought regarding their employment. With respect to strategic bombing and the use of air power to influence the battlefield, the book provides insightful parallels on how the success or failure of a component of air power in the Great War determined its development on the path to World War II. Boyne also introduces five factors by which to measure the effects of air power: size of the military budget and amount allocated to the air force, a nation's perception of the threats to its security, the level of aviation technology within a respective nation, the national policies of a nation's rulers, and the command structure of the air force. By applying these principles to countries in the interwar years and examining their successes and shortcomings, Boyne provides a basis for his discussion of military aviation's defining moments during 1939-45.
In the book's World War II chapters the United States and Soviet Union emerge as the countries that employed air power most effectively-the former achieving absolute air supremacy through its strategic bombing campaigns, and the latter in the ground support of the Red Army on the Eastern Front. The author covers the familiar ground of the costly realization of the need for fighter escorts for bombing missions over Germany, and highlights the pivotal role played by the 9th Air Force supporting the Allied advance across Europe. Boyne's attention to the Pacific Theater focuses primarily on the B-29 offensive against Japan, overlooking the vital role air power played in the far-flung island campaigns, where it proved essential not only in close air support, but also in neutralizing Japanese air bases that could interfere with amphibious operations. In addition, while space is devoted to the rise of aviation in the Imperial Japanese Navy, scant attention is paid to that in the U.S. Navy, although the author does consider the Battle of Midway one of the two battles (the second being the Battle of Britain) in which air power alone changed the course of the war.
By the end of World War II, air power, with its combination of long-range bombers and nuclear weapons, had achieved the effectiveness envisioned by its proponents. Yet, the author portrays a Cold War era characterized by limited wars fought against the backdrop of Armageddon, which resulted in a shift in influence from strategic to tactical air power. He uses Vietnam as a case study illustrating this shift (which continues to this day) and the misuse of air power, concluding with his opinion on the oftendebated question of whether air power unleashed on North Vietnam could have spelled the difference between victory and defeat.
The Influence of Air Power upon History has its oversights. Naval aviation, particularly the role of the aircraft carrier in postwar crises, is virtually ignored. So too is the advent of the helicopter and its transformation of military aviation. In addition, air power's influence is perhaps overstated in the examination of some historical events. Taken as a whole, however, the book provides some revealing insights, and its presentation of air power on a country-by-country basis makes it easy to follow for readers. To be sure, air power has changed the face of the world in which we live, and as it climbs farther and faster in the uncertain world of today, it is sure to play a large role in shaping the next century.
Mr. Goodspeed is director of the Emil Buehler Naval Aviation Library and historian at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida. He is the author of U.S. Navy: A Complete History (Westport, CT: Hugh Lauter Levin, 2003).
The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice
Alex Kershaw. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2003. 286 pp. Photos. Maps. Notes. Index. $25.00.
Reviewed by H. R. Cluster
On 6 June 1944, the town of Bedford, Virginia, a close-knit rural community of 3,000 people, suffered a tragedy of epic proportions. Some 25 soldiers from Bedford landed at Omaha Beach as part of the first wave of the invasion of Normandy. Within minutes, 19 of them were dead—the greatest one-day loss suffered by any town in the United States.
Alex Kershaw tells the story of these young soldiers, anecdotally, through their adolescent years, romances, early jobs, military training, and eventual untimely deaths on the beaches of northern France. If Homer had chronicled D-Day, he surely would have described some grievous offense by the inhabitants of Bedford, for which a vengeful god would have visited on them the unspeakable tragedy of the loss of their sons. In fact, however, the tragedy of the Bedford boys was the result of mundane social and economic forces at play in Depression-era Bedford.
Joining the National Guard for the Bedford boys was a way of socializing with other young blades and showing off their spiffy uniforms to the girls in a town where there was not much else to do. More important, for playing at being soldiers, the young Guardsmen were paid a dollar every Monday night after marching at the local armory; they also got two weeks of paid training every year at Manassas or Virginia Beach. These financial rewards were significant at a time and place where money and jobs were in short supply. None of the boys who joined the National Guard in the 1930s had any thought they were signing up for serious military service. Fate intervened-not in the form of a vengeful god or goddess, but in the form of Adolf Hitler. By the summer of 1940, Hitler's troops had overrun western Europe. In October 1940, it was announced that Company A-Bedford's company-would be mobilized into federal service. The boys were sworn in on 3 February 1941, and shortly embarked on three years of rigorous training in the states and then in England.
Through many interviews with the surviving boys, their sweethearts, wives, parents, and friends, Kershaw personalizes them and tells their individual stories. Among the many personal narratives are those of the twins, Ray and Roy Stevens, of whom only Roy returned; of Captain Taylor N. Fellers, the Company A commander, killed on D-Day; of 1st Lieutenant Ray Nance, second-in-command, who survived; and of Sergeant Earl Parker, his wife, Viola, and their daughter, Danny, whom Earl never got to see.
As one who skippered a tank landing craft to Fox Green Beach at Omaha in an early wave, not far distant from where the Bedford boys landed, I particularly appreciated Kershaw's description of their amphibious training and actual landing. Company A was transported from England on a British vessel, HMS Empire Javelin, to a predesignated area some 12 miles off the landing beach. At that point, the men of Company A were transferred to LCAs, small personnel landing craft carried by the Empire Javelin, for the landing at Dog Green Beach. The description of the embarkation, the trip to the beach, and the landing, told largely through the voices of participants, is gripping in its immediacy, vivid, and exciting, and gives a picture of the landing operation not often described elsewhere.
The chaos and carnage on the beach after landing have been described at length elsewhere and have been shown in verisimilitude in the Steven Spielberg film Saving Private Ryan, but the description of what happened to the Bedford boys, so close to one another and so well revealed to the reader because of the author's dogged research, is uniquely and profoundly moving.
The remainder of the book deals with the lingering effects of the tragedy on the people of Bedford, both collectively as a community and individually on surviving parents, wives, and sweethearts. Attempts to keep the memory of the Bedford boys alive have included the erection of a local memorial on 6 June 1954, ten years after D-Day, and more recently, the opening by President George W. Bush of the National D-Day Memorial at Bedford in 2001.
According to Kershaw, it is estimated that 500,000 of the World War II generation die each year. The Bedford Boys, besides being an interesting read, will help to keep the story of D-Day alive when no one is left to tell it.
Mr. Cluster is a retired lawyer and arbitrator of labor disputes who lives in Baltimore. As officer-in-charge of a tank landing craft during World War II, he participated in the landings at Sicily, Salerno, and Anzio. As skipper of a similar craft, he landed in the first wave at Omaha Beach at Normandy.
Asymmetrical Warfare: Today's Challenge to U. S. Military Power
Roger W. Barnett. Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 2003. 183 pp. Bib. Index. $39.95.
Reviewed by Major General Donald R. Gardner, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Since 1997, historians and strategists have written articles about asymmetric warfare. This form of conflict is, however, not new. Since biblical times, opponents have tried to think, organize, equip, and train to take advantage of enemies' weaknesses. When David slew Goliath, he used his own strength against Goliath's shortcoming—an asymmetric approach to battle. Today, asymmetries occur at all levels of war, from the tactical to the operational to the strategic. War remains what it has always been: the struggle to compel an enemy to bend to one's will. What is new is how we describe asymmetric warfare. If there is any doubt what the asymmetries of modern warfare are, Roger Barnett's concise and penetrating study, Asymmetrical Warfare, highlights the effects of operational, organizational, legal, and moral constraints on the ability of the U.S. military to wage war. In its current war on terror, the United States is vulnerable at all levels. Al Qaeda has been at war against our economy, government, and citizens. It intends to strike us in our weakest areas with slings or stones or airliners. As the author points out, "Asymmetries cause nightmares for strategists." Even so, we must work to outwit our adversaries.
As the horrible events of 11 September 2001 demonstrated, potential adversaries practice asymmetrical warfare, too. Barnett highlights other tragic possibilities. These include hostage taking, biological and chemical attacks, deliberate attacks on civilians, and environmental destruction. In these "current war" battles, Ralph Peters, author of Beyond Baghdad (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2003), and Barnett agree "treachery will be routine . . . and restrictive rules of engagement" will get our soldiers and Marines killed. Mark Conversino, in his 1997 Strategic Review article, "Sawdust Superpower," made the case that "robbed of some of our technological edge, slowed by fear of losses, and timidly proclaiming our desire to limit the damage inflicted on the enemy, we find ourselves forced to engage on the enemy's terms or disengage and go home." Barnett concurs and concludes there will be no more amphibious landings against a hostile beach, but the United States will be required to protect itself from its adversaries and force will be required even if there are constraints. The United States will have to exploit its enemies' weaknesses and be more willing to strike first-within these constraints-to protect the peace.
The "Remedies" chapter discusses U.S. leaders and policy makers coming to grips with these kinds of problems. How do you wield power in the modern world and remain peaceful? Retired Marine Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor says, "Asymmetrical Warfare could not be more timely. The rules of warfare of the twentieth century have proven no match for the challenge of the twenty-first. This book brings challenge and response into balance." As usual, General Trainor is on the mark. The book also has a superior select bibliography that readers will find very useful.
Roger Barnett is professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College. He is an outstanding author and, with Colin S. Gray, coedited Seapower and Strategy, published by the Naval Institute Press in 1989. He also is a retired U.S. Navy officer with considerable command and staff experience.
Brassey's, one of the world's oldest military publishers, prides itself in offering analyses of important issues. It has done so once again with this latest. I recommend it for both policy makers and Navy and Marine officers.
Major General Gardner holds the Robert A. Lutz Distinguished Chair of Military Studies at the Marine Corps University at Quantico, Virginia. He is also the chief executive officer of the Marine Corps University Foundation.