Monday
18 October 1999
0830-1130 (LS)
Now it is possible to go far behind the fortified lines of defense without first breaking through them. It is air power which makes this possible.
Giulio Douhet
Introduction:
World War I was the crucible for the development of air power theory. The Great War's air commanders did not wait for the publication in 1921 of Giulio Douhet's seminal work, The Command of the Air, to begin thinking about how to employ air power. They had to develop concepts on the spot that would guide their use of the air weapon.
Unfortunately, air power theory quickly out-paced practice. Throughout World War I, air power remained in its infancy, capable of producing only limited and quite feeble effects. Yet Douhet and his fellow airmen, imbued with visionary enthusiasm for their new instrument of war, accepted uncritically the most optimistic speculations about air power's future prospects and made those the basis for their theory. The result was an argument, captured perfectly in The Command of the Air, that air power had now supplanted land and sea power as the predominant military force, although only at the cost of taking the war directly to the enemy's civilian sector.
When World War II came, however, air power was not the decisive instrument that Douhet and his fellow prophets of air power had predicted. While the power of air warfare increased enormously between the wars, a wide variety of factors acted to moderate the effects Douhet had anticipated. Air power became not the predominant military instrument, but rather the equal partner of land and sea power, employed most often in coordinated joint operations. Additionally, air power proved to be considerably more complex than Douhet had envisioned, capable of undertaking a great variety of roles and producing a great variety of effects. Throughout World War II, airmen struggled to reconcile their pre-war theories with the realities of air power's employment and effects during the war. The result was a considerably more sophisticated conception both of the nature of air power and of its role in war.
The readings for this lesson introduce you to multiple stages in the evolution of air power theory. With an emphasis on the American experience, air power historian David MacIsaac offers an intriguing analysis of the factors influencing the development of air power theory from World War I through Vietnam. The excerpt from Douhet's The Command of the Air is the pure air power vision of the post-World War I period. The two Lees Knowles lectures from Lord Tedder represent the mature reflections of a World War II air commander two years after the fact. Finally, retired Air Force Colonel John Warden, architect of the Desert Storm air campaign and considered by some to be a modern-day version of Billy Mitchell, offers his thoughts on air power in light of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. You will see a clear contrast in thrust, tone, and substance among these three theorists. Yet, you also should see significant similarities, indicating there may be some constants concerning the nature of air power that stand the test of time and changing circumstances.
Objective:
- Analyze the evolution-and validity-of selected air power theories from World War I to the present.
Issues for Consideration:
- For the air power theorists, what is the relative importance of moral and physical factors in war? Against which elements of society would they argue air power can be employed most effectively to support national policy objectives? What rationale might they use for their argument? Do you agree? Why or why not?
- What differences and similarities do you see in the ideas of Douhet, Tedder, and Warden? Whose ideas do you favor, and why?
- MacIsaac argues that American "daylight, high altitude, precision bombardment of selected targets" during World War II revealed the shortcoming of "a pattern of looking at the parts of the problem at the expense of the whole, a form of reductionism surely not limited to air theorists, but one leading to a concentration on means rather than ends, running parallel with a tendency to confuse destruction with control, and at the same time reducing strategy to a targeting problem. . . ." What does Maclsaac mean? Would Warden agree? If MacIsaac is correct, what was the significance of that problem in World War II and later? Have we overcome that problem yet and, if so, how? If not, why not, and how was it manifest in the Gulf War?
- MacIsaac also suggests a major doctrinal issue remains unresolved: how independent and how centralized should air power be (remember, each Service has its own air arm)? What is your view on that issue, and why? If air power should be independent and centralized, what about maritime power or land power?
Required Readings:
* David MacIsaac, "Voices from the Central Blue: The Air Power Theorists." Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 624-639. (Student Issue)
* Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (New York, NY: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1942; rpt. Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983), pp. 3-10, 15-31, and 49-61. (Student Issue)
* Lord Tedder, Air Power in War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1948; rpt. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1975), pp. 29-52 and 87-124. (Reprint)
* John Warden, "Employing Air Power in the Twenty-first Century," in Richard H. Shultz, jr., and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, jr., eds., The Future of Air Power in the Aftermath of the Gulf War (Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, 1992), pp. 57-69. (Reprint)
Supplemental Readings:
* William Mitchell, Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power--Economic and Military (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1925; reprint ed., Mineola, NY: Dower Publications, Inc., 1988), pp. 3-26.
* Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts and Doctrine, Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, 1907-1964 (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: 1971).
* Edward Warner, "Douhet, Mitchell, Seversky: Theories of Air Warfare," Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. Edward Mead Earle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971).
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