The primary focus of this work in on those privately printed unit and organizational histories produced outside the official channels of the armed services. Some official reports are included because they fall within the criteria set out below. This guide is intended to assist the user in understanding the scheme for listing the titles and the organization of entries. The unit history has been popular since the Civil War. It most often is an un-official publication written and produced by the personnel who constituted the unit. It is often an expression of pride of their accomplishments...

In December 1918 Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick, Chief of Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), directed his newly appointed Assistant Chief of Staff, Col. Edgar S. Gorrell, to prepare a history and final report on U.S. air activities in Europe during World War I. The narratives written and compiled by Gorrell and his staff were submitted by Patrick to Gen. John J. Pershing, Commander in Chief of the AEF. They summarized Air Service activities from the arrival of the first airmen in France in the spring of 1917 until the Armistice on November 11, 1918. The "Final Report" was published...

Following the Armistice in 1918, Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick, Chief of Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, directed that a record be made of lessons learned during the war. This information, he believed, was needed for planning the Air Service of the future. The reports prepared by commanders, pilots, observers, and other members of the various Air Service units in response to General Patrick's directive are of considerable historical interest for the information they contain about the Air Service and its employment at the front. A select group of the reports on lessons learned make up...

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...

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...