How Effective Is Strategic Bombing? : Lessons Learned from World War II to Kosovo

by Gentile, Gian P.

• ISBN13: 9780814731352
• ISBN10: 081473135X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-12-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

In the wake of World War II, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and President Harry S. Truman established the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, to determine exactly how effectively strategic air power had been applied in the European theater and in the Pacific. The final study, consisting of over 330 separate reports and annexes, was staggering in its size and emphatic in its conclusions. As such it has for decades been used as an objective primary source and a guiding text, a veritable Bible for historians of air power.In this aggressively revisionist volume, Gian Gentile examines afresh this influential document to reveal how it reflected to its very foundation the American conceptual approach to strategic bombing. In the process, he exposes the survey as largely tautological and thereby throwing into question many of the central tenets of American air power philosophy and strategy.With a detailed chapter on the Gulf War and the resulting Gulf War Air Power Survey, and a concluding chapter on the lessons of the Kosovo air war,How Effective is Strategic Bombing?is the most comprehensive and important book on air power strategy in decades.

Author Biography

A former Assistant Professor of History at the United States Military Academy, West Point, Gian P. Gentile is an active duty army officer and is currently a Division Operations Planner with the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas. He has served in command and staff positions in armored units in Germany, Korea, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Origins of the American Conceptual Approach to Strategic Bombing and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey	p. 10
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey and the Future of the Air Force	p. 33
The Evaluation of Strategic Bombing against Germany	p. 54
The Survey Presents Its Findings from Europe and Develops an Alternate Strategic Bombing Plan for Japan	p. 79
The Evaluation of Strategic Bombing against Japan	p. 104
A-Bombs, Budgets, and the Dilemma of Defense	p. 131
A Comparison of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey with the Gulf War Air Power Survey	p. 167
Afterword	p. 191
Notes	p. 195
Bibliography	p. 251
Index	p. 267
About the Author	p. 275
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