The U.S. Air Force in Space: 1945 to the Twenty-First Century: Proceedings of the Air Force Historical Foundation Symposium

History

Hall, R. Cargill

Neufeld, Jacob

Military

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

This volume, the third in a series of historical case studies of important air power missions, addresses the most controversial air power mission of all- strategic bombardment. The ability of aircraft and missiles to destroy or disrupt an enemy's war-making potential and to break or weaken his will to resist, independent of the actions of ground and naval forces, has served as the central theme of air power theory and as the rallying point of air advocates.

Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment

R. Cargill Hall has written a history. Readers not familiar with the state of writing about twentieth century technology and science may not realize his achievement. Accounts-so-called histories-of recent technology and science are often little more than simplistic narratives focusing almost entirely upon sequences in hardware development or upon scientific idea explication. In commendable contrast, Hall organized a coherent narrative and analysis of complex institutions, people, ideas, and machines changing in character and in relationship one to another over time. His history of the Ranger Project is also critical and mature. He avoided neither complexity and contradiction nor reasoned analysis and judgments about episodes and people. He allowed for accident, unintended consequences, shifting priorities, budgetary adjustments, and over-determined events. This is evidenced by a frank account of six superficially ignominious Ranger failures, an analysis of the effects of NASA management by committee, an appraisal of the impact of high-priority Project Apollo upon Ranger, and a consideration of the consequences of Ranger's being done at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a university rather than an industrial laboratory. He comprehended how these and other factors generally influenced the project and shaped the automatic machine, the exploring spacecraft, at its hard core. Lunar Impact transforms the records of a technological project into history by applying the canons of historical scholarship. The techniques and modes of interpretation are the general historian's. Because of this, Ranger emerges from the study not simply as a machine designed and operated by technical specialists but, more complexly and convincingly, as the focus of activities resulting from the conflicting interests, the power struggles, and the contrasting objectives of individuals, groups, and institutions. Viewed in this way, the writing of the history of the Ranger project becomes a challenge similar to the writing of the history of political campaigns and business enterprises. The reader will recognize elements common to many kinds of history; he or she may also note the development of themes often encountered in large-scale technological and scientific projects. Most obvious is the tension between the values and goals of science and of engineering. Throughout Hall's history one encounters scientists striving to shape Ranger so that it could perform a number of complex scientific experiments; the reader also meets engineers endeavoring to design a machine realistically contrived to perform one or two priority tasks like photographing the surface of the moon. Another significant theme concerns the tension permeating the Jet Propulsion Laboratory between the academic spirit of free enquiry and loose disciplinary structure, and the industrial laboratory style of project-oriented organization and highly directed problem-solving. These tensions were severe, sometimes constructive and at other times frustrating. Hall succeeds in seeing the situations in the perspectives of the various principals and principles. Hall's book is also unusual and interesting because it reckons, as noted, with failure, the frequently ignominious inadequacy of the early machines, launches, and operations. Hall absorbed enough of the wisdom of experienced managers and engineers not to be startled or shocked into rash pronouncements and value judgments about failure. Wisely and considerately, he wrote about technical and scientific matters with his professed audience in mind-historians, interested laymen, and managers; he resisted the temptation to write for the highly sensitive, deeply involved, and specialized readers of the NASA "comment cycle." Also his technical and scientific information is related by him to general themes.

Lunar Impact: A History of Project Ranger (NASA History Series)

Science & Math

Administration, National Aeronautics and Space

Astronomy & Space Science

Based on a retrospective at the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Texas, this volume marshals the recollections of American and Japanese aviators and the thoughts of academics to address the military, political, ethical, and historical issues of the famous and controversial wartime special operation that saw the US Air Force intercept and shoot down a bomber carrying the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

LIGHTNING OVER BOUGAINVILLE (SMITHSONIAN HISTORY OF AVIATION AND SPACEFLIGHT SERIES)

World

Smithsonian

Frank G. Tinker, Jr., a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Class of 1933, flew in combat with Soviet airmen during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Flying with the Spanish Republican Air Force, he was the top American ace during the Spanish Civil War. 
This biography deals with his experience in combat, culminating with Tinker commanding a Soviet squadron and terminating his contract with the government of Spain. After returning to the United States, he wrote a memoir about fighting for Republican Spain and later died under mysterious circumstances in Little Rock in June 1939. While there have been other books about the air war during the Spanish Civil War, this book differs from the preceding ones on two counts. First, it is the complete biography of a most colorful and uncommon young man--based not only on his memoir, but on Tinker family papers and his own personal records. Through sheer perseverance, he rose from a teenage enlisted seaman, through the U.S. Naval Academy, to the officer's wardroom--then pressed on to claim the wings of a naval aviator and become a superlative fighter pilot and a published author. More unusual still, he possessed extraordinary people skills--skills that allowed him to deal and move with relative ease among Navy compatriots, foreign combat pilots, left-wing literati in Madrid and Paris, and the rural folk of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, who embraced him as "one of their own." While in Spain, Tinker socialized with Ernest Hemingway, Robert Hale Merriman, the leader of the American Volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade and his successor Milton Wolff, who led the 15th International Brigade during the Battle of the Ebro. All this he managed before his death at age twenty-nine. Second, the book focuses on the aerial tactics introduced in the Spanish Civil War that became standard military practice a few years later in World War II. Included are descriptions of the German introduction of the "Finger Four" fighter formation that replaced the "V of three or four" formation then in vogue; the first use of military airlift to move large numbers of troops and equipment into combat; the greater accuracy and destructiveness of dive bombers vice high altitude bombers; perfection of the "silent approach" used by high altitude bombers before the introduction of radar early warning; and air intelligence reports that asserted daylight high altitude bombers could not "get through" and return from enemy territory successfully without the protection of fighter cover. U.S. Army Air Corps leaders at that time had fashioned a doctrine that the high speed, high altitude, "self-defending" daylight bomber would always get through, and rejected these intelligence reports--at a subsequent cost in lives of hundreds of high altitude bomber aircrews in Europe in World War II.

Five Down, No Glory: Frank G. Tinker, Mercenary Ace in the Spanish Civil War

Biographies & Memoirs

Smith, Estate of Richard K.

Leaders & Notable People

Naval_Institute_Press

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