Kategoria BISAC: History >> Military - Aviation & Space

In 1914, the U.S. Navy established its first air base in Pensacola, Florida, and two years later, the U.S. Army conducted the first combat flights in American history after using the Gulf Coast region of Texas as a training area. In the decades that followed, the Gulf South welcomed over two hundred military air stations, and by the close of the twentieth century these installations had fostered critical advances in pilot training, producing many of the most acclaimed military personnel to take to the skies. Vincent P. Caire s authoritative and inspiring photographic survey recognizes Gulf...

On December 18, 1972, more than one hundred U.S. B-52 bombers flew over North Vietnam to initiate Operation Linebacker II. During the next eleven days, sixteen of these planes were shot down and another four suffered heavy damage. These losses soon proved so devastating that Strategic Air Command was ordered to halt the bombing. The U.S. Air Force's poor performance in this and other operations during Vietnam was partly due to the fact that they had trained their pilots according to methods devised during World War II and the Korean War, when strategic bombers attacking targets were...

At age 36, Laurence S. Kuter (1905--1979) became the youngest general officer since William T. Sherman. He served as deputy commander of allied tactical air forces in North Africa during World War II and helped devise the American bombing strategy in Europe. Although his combat contributions were less notable than other commanders in the Eighth Air Force, few officers saw as many theaters of operation as he did or were as highly sought-after. After World War II, he led the Military Air Transport Service, Air University, Far East Air Forces, and served as commander-in-chief of the North...