In our continuing effort to document the use of airpower in Southeast Asia, we present in this volume two major contributions to the "airpower story." Monograph 4, "The Vietnamese Air Force, 1951-1975, An Analysis of its Role in Combat," was written by General William W. Momyer, USAF (Ret), former commander of air forces in Vietnam. It presents an objective review of the South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) and the role played by the U.S. Air Force in VNAF's short 14-year life span. To provide the necessary perspective to this complex subject, the author presents a comparative analysis of the...

Steadfast and Courageous tells the story of the B-29s that bombed from the very beginning of the war to the end. During the campaign, they knocked out the few strategic targets in North Korea; leveled North Korean cities; and attacked airfields, close air support, and interdiction targets. The bombers had problems. The numbers employed were small-just over a hundred aircraft, in contrast to over one thousand stationed in the Mariana Islands at the end of the Japanese war. In addition, the Boeing bombers were plagued by engine problems, just as they had been in the Pacific war. But most of...

This publication is the first of a series titled The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia. It tells the story of the Air Force's involvement in the region from the end of the second World War until the major infusion of American troops into Vietnam in 1965. During these years, and most noticeably after 1961, the Air Force's principal role in Southeast Asia was to advise the Vietnamese Air Force in its struggle against insurgents seeking the collapse of the Saigon government. This story includes some issues of universal applicability to the Air Force: the role of air power in an...

On June 25, 1950, North Korean troops, supported by Soviet-supplied tanks and artillery, advanced across the 38th parallel, routing the lightly armed South Koreans. The immediate tasks facing General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's Far East Command and its air component, the Far East Air Forces, were to provide equipment for the embattled South Koreans and to evacuate the American noncombatants caught in the path of the Communist offensive. Fighters and bombers of the Far East Air Forces contributed to the evacuation by protecting the ships and aircraft carrying the refugees to Japan. While...

The Air Force instinctively disliked the slow, gradual way the United States prosecuted its war against the Vietnamese communists. While Americans undoubtedly delayed a communist victory in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia long enough to spare Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries a similar fate, the American public grew very tired of this war years before its dismal conclusion. Due to questionable political policies and decision-making, only sporadic and relatively ineffective use had been made of air power's ability to bring great force to bear quickly and decisively. The United...

Before the Korean War, the primary mission of Lt. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer's Far East Air Forces was air defense of the Japanese homeland. Most of the aircraft constituting Stratemeyer's inventory were interceptors, not designed for the type of combat that would be required now that the United States was joining in the UN effort to end the war in Korea. The Joint Army/USAAF doctrine of 1946, known as Field Manual 31-35, Air Ground Operations, was also considered outdated in the present circumstance. A new approach to warfighting had to be developed in response to the strong influence of...

The United States Air Force reached its nadir during the opening two years of the Rolling Thunder air campaign in North Vietnam. Never had the Air Force operated with so many restraints and to so little effect. These pages are painful but necessary reading for all who care about the nation's military power. Jacob Van Staaveren wrote this book in the 1970s near the end of his distinguished government service, which began during the occupation of Japan; the University of Washington Press published his book on that experience in 1995. He was an Air Force historian in Korea during the Korean War,...

In commemoration of the Korean War, the U.S. Air Force History Program is publishing several works. One is this pamphlet, a companion volume to the air war chronology entitled The USAF in Korea: A Chronology, 1950-1953, which details monthly and daily USAF activities and operations in the theater. This pamphlet, The USAF in Korea: Campaigns, Units, and Stations, 1950-1953, provides information on the ten combat campaigns of the Korean War and gives an organizational view of tactical and support organizations carrying out combat operations. It also locates organizations or elements of...

In commemoration of the Korean War, the U.S. Air Force History Program is publishing several works. One is this pamphlet, a companion volume to the air war chronology entitled The USAF in Korea: A Chronology, 1950-1953, which details monthly and daily USAF activities and operations in the theater. This pamphlet, The USAF in Korea: Campaigns, Units, and Stations, 1950-1953, provides information on the ten combat campaigns of the Korean War and gives an organizational view of tactical and support organizations carrying out combat operations. It also locates organizations or elements of...

The AAF in Northwest Africa focuses on the Allied assault on Northwest Africa and the battle for Tunisia-the critical second front that secured the Mediterranean and increased the enemy's vulnerability to a massive invasion from Britain. From this experience of the Twelfth Air Force and its British counterparts in 1942-43 evolved a spirit of Anglo-American cooperation and important aspects of air doctrine still relevant to today's Air Force.