Mark Clodfelter. Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917-1945. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. The American bomber dream: a more humane kind of warfare through precision bombing. Looks like a worthy update to Michael Sherry’s The Rise of American Air Power. Randall T. Wakelam. The Science of Bombing: Operational […]
The Royal Australian Air Force turns 90 today. It was officially formed as an independent service out of the old Australian Flying Corps on 31 March 1921 (making it three years less one day younger than the Royal Air Force). At first it was just the Australian Air Force: it didn’t get the Royal prefix
Thanks to JDK for forwarding this interesting image. It’s the front cover of Bomber Command: The Air Ministry’s Account of Bomber Command’s Offensive against the Axis, September, 1939-July, 1941 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1941) (written by Hilary Saunders). So it was part of the same series of propaganda pamphlets as the more famous The
John S. Partington. Building Cosmopolis: The Political Thought of H. G. Wells. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2003. A very highly regarded book on Wells’ ideas about a world state and how to get one, a subject which I have dipped into insofar as it involves airpower (which is frequently).
Philip Anthony Towle. Pilots and Rebels: The Use of Aircraft in Unconventional Warfare 1918-1988. London: Brassey’s, 1989. From air control to counterinsurgency. A bit RAF-centric until after 1945.
A recent comment by J Campbell raised the question of whether Nevil Shute’s 1949 novel No Highway was in fact a prediction of the De Havilland Comet airliner’s metal fatigue problems, which led to two crashes (‘hull losses’, in industry parlance) in 1954. My response was that it seemed unlikely that Shute had any particular
Jan Rüger. The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. A book I cited in my thesis. I don’t see why the library should have all the fun.
I’ve previously posted some of Gorden Cullen’s artwork for the Tecton Group’s 1939 book Planned A.R.P.. Here are some more of his cute drawings dealing with an awful subject. In this case, he is illustrating the ‘general agreement among experts’ on the threat posed by the bomber. (a) The range, speed, and carrying capacity of
Charles Sowerwine. France Since 1870: Culture, Society and the Making of the Republic. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Second Edition. French history is one of my weak points. If I’d taken one of Chips’ classes — he retired from my former department a few years ago — I might not have needed to buy his book.
One sub-species of military intellectual is the retired field marshal (or admiral, or air marshal) who, at the end of a long career, sets down their thoughts on the future of warfare for the interested reader. Even though they may be quite famous, their essays into futurism are nowadays read less often than that of
