Air Power

The Men, Machines, and Ideas that Revolutionized War, From Kitty Hawk to Gulf War II
by Stephen Budiansky
Hardcover: New York: Viking, 2004. ISBN 0-670-03285-9
Paperback: New York: Penguin, 2005. ISBN 014303474X

This is a long book at 518 pages including notes and index, and it has a subtitle to match: "The Men, Machines, and Ideas that Revolutionized War, From Kitty Hawk to Gulf War II." That the beginning and end both refer to American developments is significant — not only did two American brothers develop the first heavier-than-air craft, but American air forces have maintained air superiority in every war since the First World War. With control of the air all-but-assured by its technological and industrial superiority, it has been the United States' prerogative to develop doctrines of air power in warfare. Budiansky presents most of the debates on air doctrine in an American or British context, and undoubtedly it helps that these records would be in English. But he clearly believes that they set the pace, and the role of other world powers was to react — there is very little discussion of the Soviet air force, for example.

The book thus avoids meandering from its theme: the great debate between strategic and tactical air power — should airplanes be used to bring war to the enemy's homeland, or should they be used to win quickly and decisively on the battlefield? It would simply overwhelm to cover a century of flight from every nation's viewpoint. But when important developments occur overseas, the book travels there — to Spain as the Luftwaffe tests out its doctrines in preparation for World War II, to the Japanese carrier fleet in the runup to Pearl Harbor, and to Israel as American air power wins overwhelming victories against Soviet technologies by proxy.

The book is more than a chronological account of military doctrine. It deftly interleaves technological developments, both spurred by military requirements and organically invented in the civilian sector. Beginning with the Wright Brothers, Budiansky recounts technology with a signature flair for cause-and-effect. There is great attention to motivation and environment, and we feel as though we were standing right next to the brothers as they tinker in their bicycle shop, correspond with the great engineer Octave Chanute, and take a train to North Carolina every few months to put their work to the test. Why did they succeed where others failed? Because they undertook a systematic series of experiments to better understand the behavior of airfoils. As a result, they knew that control was more important than power — while others were brute-forcing it, the Wright Brothers made do with a mere 12-horsepower engine which was actually twice as powerful as needed. After succeeding in making the first flight, the brothers run into difficulty dealing with the military estabishment and incur suspicion from others by their secrecy during the patent process. They have such difficulty reaping the just rewards of their breakthrough that the reader may be excused for letting out a great sigh and soaring along as they triumphantly fly circles around the other craft at a flight exhibition in France.

Whole books have been written about the Wright Brothers, but Budiansky applies the same meticulous research and the same gift for animating history to dozens of other pioneering developments. The NACA wind tunnel experiments which greatly improved understanding of aerodynamics, Frank Whittle's pursuit of jet propulsion, Bill Norden's bombsight, Robert Jones' research into swept-wings — all are put into their personal and scientific context. We see, for example, the repeatedly difficult dealings between innovators and the non-innovative government purchasers of their inventions. Scientific concepts are explained clearly and succintly — difficult concepts are illustrated with simple and effective diagrams. There's a sketch from Wilbur Wright of the bicycle wheel setup used for their experiments on lift; an explanation of the benefits of variable-pitch propellers; a vector chart showing why a swept wing undergoes less strain at high speeds; and of course, drawings of military aviation concepts. Simple schematics of the military aircraft mentioned in the text are accompanied by basic statistics like speed and armament.

The military focus of the book leaves about as much room for commercial aviation as for the Soviet air force — very little. The Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-3 fit in two paragraphs, for Budiansky focuses on the effects rather than the individual aircraft — the single wing and streamlining allowed military aircraft to fly faster, farther, heavier, and more durably. Of course, military doctrines have their genesis in entrenched interests, bureaucracies, politics, and the makeup of the officer corps. Budiansky does not shy from pointing fingers, starting with the bureaucracies which initially rebuffed the Wrights, tracing the stagnation of British aviation as the RAF promised to police the Empire on a budget, and ending with the "bomber generals" in the United States Air Force who all-too-often had no college education and (as he points out) a correspondingly narrow viewpoint arising from gut instincts. Granted, it is much easier to make a target of the bomber generals now that the Strategic Air Command no longer exists and their beloved B-52s are now used as guided munitions platforms.

As his derisory view of bomber generals indicates, Budiansky takes a dim view of strategic bombing. The whole book is best described as an indictment of strategic bombing, with a chronological account of its failings, and the relevant politics and technology wrapped around the chronology. World War I was a proving ground where many things were tried, including strategic bombing from Zeppelins and bomber aircraft, both of which induced much more hysteria than warranted by actual physical damage. Following the war, Giulio Douhet developed a visionary concept of the total reach of air power, from which Budiansky quotes stark sentences on "national totality," "the maw of war," "incendaries, gas bombs," and "constant nightmare of imminent death and destruction." (p. 137) But Douhet is introduced with questionable credentials, and Budiansky seems rather bemused that the doctrine of strategic bombing would find its foremost proponent in an estranged Italian Army officer who never learned to fly.

Then we get the devastating application of close air support by the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War, a dramatic depiction of the Finest Hour when the Few did So Much for So Many, a side trip to naval aviation for the carrier battles of the Pacific, and an approving look at the employment of tactical aviation in the European theater. But all of this leads up to the strategic bombing, enshrined in countless films and books as a heroic effort by the Eighth Air Force, destroying Germany's war machine with Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses from 30,000 feet — the Western contribution to the war against Germany while Soviet troops died in the millions on the Eastern Front. To Budiansky, though, the great B-17 raids were largely futile. The staggering losses among the bombers turned the WWI-era knights of the sky into just more cannon fodder, while accuracy was abysmal and damage slight. The attack on Axis oil supplies was one instance where strategic bombing did work, but it was not carried out enthusiastically enough to make a difference until the war had already been all-but-won on the ground.

Budiansky points to the virtual destruction of the entirety of Japan's cities as proof of the uselessness of strategic bombing — just as German civilians died by night in British carpet-bombing and returned to their nearly undamaged factories by day to churn out war material, the Japanese martial spirit was unbowed by firebombing losses. The atomic bomb, in effect, provided a face-saving pretext to surrender — here was a weapon which was like a bolt from heaven, which nobody could defend against. Indeed, it is interesting to read this book and compare it to Robert McNamara's appearance in The Fog of War, where he rattles off people killed and square miles destroyed as examples of the devastation caused by war and, seemingly, also proof of its efficacy (McNamara is similarly ambiguous on Vietnam).

The predominance of SAC after the War is just as distasteful to Budiansky; the insanity of MAD and the corruption of the role of the fighter left the USAF with terrible ground attack weapons in Vietnam. Even the Navy F-4, designed without a cannon as a missile-only craft, was far superior to the Air Force jets which were designed to intercept Soviet nuclear bombers over the skies of Alaska. The F-106, for example, could be flown automatically from the ground, and the complex of IBM computers to support the video map display brings to mind the indelible "Big Board" from Dr. Strangelove, and also places in context the less funny Fail-Safe. SAMs then threatened air power of any kind, until the Israeli intervention in Lebanon proved that air superiority could be regained by thorough Wild Weasel raids to decisely weed out missile sites in advance of the main engagement. Then, of course, come the smart bombs and stealth aircraft, their application in the First Gulf War, and finally the GPS and communications technologies which made rapid airpower response possible in Afghanistan and the Second Gulf War. Budiansky has a talent for selecting quotes, and a particularly apropos one refers to the rapid victory of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan: "They had horses and air power." If this is a direct quote, it doesn't seem to have been picked up in the search engines yet, though certainly others have propunded a similar theme.

Budiansky seems to relish challenging established wisdom. In his view, for example, the rapid victory in the Second Gulf War proves the correctness of Secretary Rumsfeld's idea that a large field army would be unnecessary. Lately there has been a storm of criticism over the folly of invading Iraq without a sufficiently large force, but in Budiansky's view, the war is clearly just the war, it was won as planned with precision airstrikes, and thus no mention of the much messier occupation which had to follow that quick victory. (Of course, it is the occupation which requires troops.)

Yet his politics on the whole actually seem more liberal than his defense of Rumsfeld would indicate — the interwar development of streamlined planes, for example, is credited both to private industry and to government-sponsored research in the form of the streamlined NACA engine cowling. He repeats the famous Johnson quote about the Air Force not being able to bomb an outhouse in Vietnam without his permission. But while a whole generation of writers have pointed to this as an example of excessive civilian meddling, where the military would've won the war had they been left to their own devices, Budiansky believes that the Air Force doctrine in Vietnam was so flawed that it really made little difference. Likewise, he comes down very hard on Hirohito, pointing to his encouragement of the fight-to-the-last mentality that pervaded Japan. Certainly doesn't fit the comfortable Cold War thinking, with Japan the Westernmost fortress of the forces of capitalism, that Hirohito was just a figurehead who bore little to no responsibility for Japan's actions in the War.

Indeed, his willingness to dig deeper and go beyond comforting, oft-repeated "facts" makes this book a refreshing read for those already well-versed in military history. There are, for example, amusing tidbits from the past seen in a modern light. Post-WWI British colonial wars attempted decapitation strikes against rebel leaders, as "the RAF claimed it could single out the house of a particular sheikh for attack when bombing a village." (p. 145) Likewise, some seemingly time-tested facts turn out to be wholly manufactured — Billy Mitchell's sinking of the battleship Ostfriesland is usually accompanied by stories of weeping admirals watching the ship go down, but Brodiansky traces it to a biography of Mitchell written by his sister, and discounts it as just another boast from Mitchell's PR machine. The bombing of Guernica has become immortal through the Picasso painting, and its symbolism as the site of the Holy Oak drew contemporary commentary about its being deliberately targeted as a ruthless warning to the Basque. But Budiansky follows the air campaign which unfolded prior to Guernica, and notes that it was just another target — indeed, the German air commander von Richthofen was unaware of the symbolism until he was given a tour of the captured town. Closer to the present day, he addresses the intercontinental attack missions of the B-2s which took off from Missouri and bombed Serbia. This capability was greatly trumpeted at the time as an example of the global reach of American airpower, and much celebrated among Republicans as a vindication of the massive Reagan-era military spending, but to Budiansky this long range is beside the point — the B-2s took off from Missouri not because they could, but because their anti-radar coating was so fragile that they could not be based any closer to the action (hence the wasted time in transit). That he attacks cherished historical truths left and right shows that political correctness is the last thing on Budiansky's mind. Look at the actual effects, he seems to be saying, don't get caught up in triumphalism of doctrine.

At the same time, the book remains accessible to the layman. Proceeding chronologically, Brodiansky builds military doctrines from the ground up, developing ideas as they come up and are debated. In the historical context that he presents, it becomes easy to understand military terminology such as air superiority, interdiction, and helicopter gunship. But the book does assume a fair amount of cultural and technological awareness, say from reading The Times. For example, he doesn't expand the acronym AWACS, he mentions Vannevar Bush but doesn't explain that he was President of MIT, he talks about multi-hundred-mph tailwinds affecting accuracy in B-29 high-level bombing but doesn't make these incredible speeds credible by noting that the aforementioned winds are the jet stream. Facts like the F-86 being the first fighter to break the sound barrier (albeit in a dive), or the Lake Denmark arsenal explosion in New Jersey affecting more explosive material than the power of the first atomic bomb (500 ktons of TNT vs 20), are presented as-is without explanation. Dig deeper, he seems to be saying, in the same way that he dug behind other myths of military aviation.

Through the book, Budiansky develops a persuasive argument about the primacy of tactical airpower over strategic. It does seem too neat and tied together, though. The NATO bombing of Serbia may have been precise in nature, but in the populace it instilled the same reaction as in the British population of World War II: defiance, as fashionable youngster began appearing in the streets with T-shirts featuring a large red bullseye (must've bought them from Target). Air Power was cited, and its critique of strategic bombing adopted, in Malcolm Gladwell's article in the December 13, 2004 issue of The New Yorker. Gladwell juxtaposed the difficulty of reading mammograms with the difficulty of high-altitude bombing, and quoted German production chief Albert Speer: "As it was, not a tank, plane, or other piece of weaponry failed to be produced because of lack of ball bearings." Budiansky uses the same juicy quote, but subsequent New Yorker letters to the editor point out that the Speer letter continues by stating that, had the ball bearing plant bombing campaign been continued, German production would have run into serious problems. Well, if ball bearings are like the oil that Budiansky points to as the only major success of strategic bombing, then perhaps the supply chain disruption theory was correct after all, and it was the dispersion of Allied bombing effort that prevented any one industry from being disrupted enough to stop the German war effort. Undoubtedly Budiansky has a response; he already notes that much German industry was moved east to escape bombing. But if he were a bit less sure of himself, if he brought up and directly addressed some objections to his thesis, the book would be far more convincing.

Correct or not in its thesis, the book is a fascinating read and a superb primer on the development of air power. It very aptly ties together the military, technological, and political developments which affected the rise of air power. This is a work from knowledgeable and well-read student of history, with meticulous notes (5-6 notes per page) and lengthy bibliography. It's written with such gusto that the pages fly by very quickly. Clearly Budiansky had fun writing the book, to the point of calling Army pilots "aviators" in Billy Mitchell's naval attack demonstrations. The reader is left with both a thesis and some fascinating anecdotes, and a general appreciation for the trials and tribulations which made air power the dominant force that it is today.