Like all chronologies, bibliographies, and encyclopedias, Air Force Combat Units of World War II serves a very special historical function. It traces the lineage of each Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force combat group or higher organization active in World War II, from its origins to 1956. It is a concise official record of those units: their assignments, subordinate organizations, stations, commanders, campaigns, aircraft, and decorations. But it is more than that. As an important source of ready information, this volume not only serves as a reference tool for historians and researchers; but...

In April 1917, as the United States entered World War I, the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps had only a handful of usable flying fields. This number quickly grew, ultimately exceeding 40 by the end of the war. Several uncompleted fields at the time of the Armistice were abandoned, and in the period between the world wars, the number of fields decreased more until only a relatively few were in use in 1939, when the country again began to rebuild its land and air forces. By the end of 1943, these few fields had grown to an astounding peak of 783-345 main bases, 116 subbases, and...

This book explores the unique problem of defending air bases during the Vietnam War. It centers on the primary efforts of the United States Air Force and allied air units to defend 10 key air bases within the Republic of Vietnam. Bien Hoa, on 1 November 1964, was the first base to be attacked and until, the cease-lire in January 1973, these bases suffered a total of 475 attacks. ' Although there were initial deficiencies in staff support for base defense in such key areas as intelligence, motor vehicles, weapons procurement and maintenance, communications, and civil engineering, significant...

This analytical work by Dr. Eduard Mark of the Center for Air Force History examines the practice of air interdiction in three wars: World War II, the Korean war, and the war in Southeast Asia. It considers eleven important interdiction campaigns, all of them American or Anglo-American, for only the United States and Great Britain had the resources to conduct interdiction campaigns on a large scale in World War II. Dr. Mark proposes what he considers to be a realistic objective for interdiction: preventing men, equipment, and supplies from reaching the combat area when the enemy needs them...

In its first fifty years as an independent armed service, the United States Air Force (USAF) has fostered science and technology and-in partnership with the private sector-developed and produced the complex tools of aerospace power that helped the Free World prevail in the Cold War. The foundation for these extraordinary achievements was laid in the forty years before the Air Force separated from the U.S. Army in 1947. This booklet tells the story of how the air components of the Army and then the USAF organized and managed the activities required to get aircraft and other weapon systems from...

This book describes the struggle to desegregate the post-World War II U.S. Army Air Forces and its successor, the U.S. Air Force, and the remarkable advances made during the next two decades to end racial segregation and move towards equality of treatment of Negro airmen. The author, Lt. Col. Alan L. Gropman, a former Instructor of History at the U.S. Air Force Academy, received his doctorate degree from Tufts University. His dissertation served as the basis for this volume. In it, the author describes the fight to end segregation within the Air Force following President Harry S. Truman's...

This volume is the second in a series on active Air Force bases and a continuation of a recent line of works prepared for the Center for Air Force History under the Reference Series. These reference books contain specific information about a number of topics of interest to the United States Air Force and other arms of the Department of Defense. They are designed to present fundamental data about such diverse subjects as Air Force aircraft, combat action, unit lineage and honors, campaign medals and streamers, and air bases, for those who will write more extensive narrative accounts about Air...

For the past eighty years the US military establishment has worked to integrate air power into its doctrine, strategy, force structure, and tactics in order to maximize the nation's security. This study by Dr. Richard Davis highlights one aspect of this process, that of providing the most potent mix of army and air forces to prosecute ground warfare. It also illustrates the impediments to joint action created by the services' separate organizations and distinctive doctrine. In addition, this monograph suggests that changes to improve interservice cooperation are often either forced by combat...

Though we are still within the first century of powered flight, air power has already become the dominant form of military power projection in the modern world. The doctrinal underpinnings of air power thought are, of course, traditionally ascribed to the three great theorists of air power application, Doubet, Trenchard, and Mitchell. Since the Second World War, the air power community has not often explored the doctrinal implications of air power development. Lord Tedder's Lee Knowles lectures at Cambridge, and the writings of Air Vice Marshal R. A. Mason, and Colonel John A. Warden III...

This is the fifth in a series of research studies-historical works that were not published for various reasons. Yet, the material contained therein was deemed to be of enduring value to Air Force members and scholars. These were minimally edited and printed in a limited edition to reach a small audience that may find them useful. We invite readers to provide feedback to the Air Force History and Museums Program. Beginning in 1946, the Army Air Forces (AAF) first sponsored a study on the Nuclear Energy for Propulsion (NEPA) project. The effort progressed over the next several years after...