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Author: Conrad C. Crane Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
The Korean War was the first armed engagement for the newly formed U.S. Air Force, but far from the type of conflict it expected or wanted to fight. As the first air war of the nuclear age, it posed a major challenge to the service to define and successfully carry out its mission by stretching the constraints of limited war while avoiding the excesses of total war. Conrad Crane analyzes both the successes and failures of the air force in Korea, offering a balanced treatment of how the air war in Korea actually unfolded. He examines the Air Force's contention that it could play a decisive role in a non-nuclear regional war but shows that the fledgling service was held to unrealistically high expectations based on airpower's performance in World War II, despite being constrained by the limited nature of the Korean conflict. Crane exposes the tensions and rivalries between services, showing that emphasis on strategic bombing came at the expense of air support for ground troops, and he tells how interactions between army and air force generals shaped the air force's mission and strategy. He also addresses misunderstandings about plans to use nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in the war and includes new information from pilot correspondence about the informal policy of "hot pursuit" over the Yalu that existed at the end of the war. The book considers not only the actual air effort in Korea but also its ramifications. The air force doubled in size during the war and used that growth to secure its position in the defense establishment, but it wagered its future on its ability to deliver nuclear weapons in a high-intensity conflict—a position that left it unprepared to fight the next limited war in Vietnam. As America observes the fiftieth anniversary of its initial engagement in Korea, Crane's book is an important reminder of the lessons learned there. And as airpower continues to be a cornerstone of American defense, this examination of its uses in Korea provides new insights about the air force's capabilities and limitations.
Author: Conrad C. Crane Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
The Korean War was the first armed engagement for the newly formed U.S. Air Force, but far from the type of conflict it expected or wanted to fight. As the first air war of the nuclear age, it posed a major challenge to the service to define and successfully carry out its mission by stretching the constraints of limited war while avoiding the excesses of total war. Conrad Crane analyzes both the successes and failures of the air force in Korea, offering a balanced treatment of how the air war in Korea actually unfolded. He examines the Air Force's contention that it could play a decisive role in a non-nuclear regional war but shows that the fledgling service was held to unrealistically high expectations based on airpower's performance in World War II, despite being constrained by the limited nature of the Korean conflict. Crane exposes the tensions and rivalries between services, showing that emphasis on strategic bombing came at the expense of air support for ground troops, and he tells how interactions between army and air force generals shaped the air force's mission and strategy. He also addresses misunderstandings about plans to use nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in the war and includes new information from pilot correspondence about the informal policy of "hot pursuit" over the Yalu that existed at the end of the war. The book considers not only the actual air effort in Korea but also its ramifications. The air force doubled in size during the war and used that growth to secure its position in the defense establishment, but it wagered its future on its ability to deliver nuclear weapons in a high-intensity conflict—a position that left it unprepared to fight the next limited war in Vietnam. As America observes the fiftieth anniversary of its initial engagement in Korea, Crane's book is an important reminder of the lessons learned there. And as airpower continues to be a cornerstone of American defense, this examination of its uses in Korea provides new insights about the air force's capabilities and limitations.
Author: Department of Defense Publisher: ISBN: 9781520778891 Category : Languages : en Pages : 656
Book Description
This important and comprehensive historical account of the Korean War and the American Air Force seeks to record the story of the air war as it was. The Korean War was the first in American history to be limited not by technology, or by the ability of the combatants to mobilize their military power, but by political design. The newly independent Air Force, shaped in the previous two decades by an increasing concentration on the strategic role of attacking an enemy's homeland, now faced a conflict almost entirely tactical in character and limited as to how and where airpower could be applied. Like the rest of the American military establishment, the Air Force was in no way prepared for battle at the western rim of the Pacific. Yet despite these limitations, the Air Force responded quickly and effectively, proving in many ways the utility of airpower in modern war. With virtually no warning, the Air Force injected itself into the war in the first critical week. It transported troops and equipment from Japan to Korea, evacuated American nationals, provided significant intelligence through aerial reconnaissance, and most importantly helped to slow the North Korean advance so that United Nations forces could construct a defensive position on the peninsula. For the next three years, American airpower contributed everywhere to the allied military effort; maintaining control of the airspace over the battlefield; disrupting enemy supplies and movement; supporting the ground armies at the point of contact with the enemy; transporting men and materiel at critical times to the zone of operations.Futrell describes all of these operations with a clarity and a balance that have since become a model for official military history. Even better, he has analyzed the operations, interpreting their significance overall to the course of the conflict and their importance in the application of airpower to modern war. He shows the effects of close air support in enemy killed, supplies denied, and the turn of battle; he assesses the success or failure of various strategies, tactics, techniques, and methods; he emphasizes the difficulties the Air Force faced and how the challenges were met and overcome. Futrell details the modifications to doctrine and procedure, the changes in organization necessitated by distance or shortages in men and equipment, or by austere and inadequate fields and facilities. And in Dr. Futrell's skilled hands, analyses of failures teaches as much as examinations of successes.CHAPTER 1. The First Six Days of Communist Aggression * CHAPTER 2. Plans and Preparations * CHAPTER 3. Drawing the Battleline in Korea * CHAPTER 4. In Defense of the Pusan Perimeter * CHAPTER 5. Victory in the South * CHAPTER 6. The Strategic Bombing Campaign * CHAPTER 7. On to the Yalu * CHAPTER 8. Two Months of Defeat and Retreat * CHAPTER 9. Air Superiority-Key to Victory * CHAPTER 10. Target Logistics * CHAPTER 11. Air-Ground Operations on the Field of Battle * CHAPTER 12. Armistice Talks Mark a New Phase of Korean Hostilities * CHAPTER 13. MIG s Seek Air Superiority * CHAPTER 14. Ten Months of Comprehensive Railway Interdiction * CHAPTER 15. Toward an Air-Pressure Strategy * CHAPTER 16. Summer. Autumn 1952 * CHAPTER 17. Air Reconnaissance. Transport, and Rescue * CHAPTER 18. Sustained Air-Pressure Operations * CHAPTER 19. Airpower Achieves United Nations Military Objectives * CHAPTER 20. Air Mission AccomplishedA degree of calculated risk is involved in the preparation of any history of recent events, and this history--written at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, in the months between March 1957 and November 1958--is no exception. The passing of time and the completion of definitive Army and Navy service histories of the Korean war will undoubtedly provide additional historical perspective which was not available to the author of this USAF history.
Author: D. Clayton James Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451602375 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
Distinguished historian D. Clayton James offers a brilliant reinterpretation of the Korean War conflict. Focusing on the critical issue of command, he shows how the Korean War is a key to understanding American decision-making in all military encounters since World War II. Korea, the first of America’s limited wars to stem the tide of world communism, was fought on unfamiliar terrain and against peasant soldiers and would become a template for subsequent American military engagements, especially Vietnam. And yet, the strategic and tactical doctrines employed in Korea, as well as the weapons and equipment, were largely left over from World War II. James, the master biographer of MacArthur, uses studies of military crises to examine the American high command in the Korean War. He explores the roles, leadership, personalities, and prejudices of five key commanders—President Harry S. Truman; Generals Douglas MacArthur, Matthew B. Ridgway, and Mark W. Clark; and Admiral C. Turner Joy—and then looks at six crucial issues confronting them in that conflict. From the decision made by Truman, without congsessional approval, to commit United States forces to combat in Korea, to MacArthur’s persistent fight for approval of his dangerous plan to assault Inchon, to the judgment to finally open truce negotiations, these turning points illuminate the American way of command in wartime. James analyzes the ground-level results and long-term implications of each choice, and sensitively explores the course that might had followed if other options had been taken. Probing the nature and consequences of these military resolutions, James shows how the conduct of the Korean War, like every new war, bears the imprint of the preceding one.
Author: Conrad C. Crane Publisher: ISBN: 9780700622092 Category : Air power Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The book describes the creation and conduct of American airpower strategy in World War II, and explains how the legacies of that experience have affected warfare ever since.
Author: Air Force Historical Foundation. Symposium Publisher: ISBN: Category : Korean War, 1950-1953 Languages : en Pages : 380
Book Description
In commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Korean War, the official history offices of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force and their respective historical associations collaborated to sponsor as comprehensive a symposium as possible, including as participants some of the coalition partners who contributed forces and weapons to the war. The intent of this symposium, titled Coalition Air Warfare during the Korean War, 1950 -1953, was to focus not only on the contributions made by the armed forces of the United States, but also on those of America's allies. The diverse group of panelists and speakers included not only scholars with subject matter expertise, but also veteran soldiers, sailors, and airmen who had served in that conflict. It was hoped that the melding of these diverse perspectives would provide interesting, if sometimes conflicting, views about the Korean War. The symposium organizers designated an agenda of six specific panels for investigation, including Planning and Operations; Air Superiority, Air Support of Ground Forces; Air Interdiction and Bombardment, Air Reconnaissance and Intelligence, and Logistical Support of Air Operations. Each session began with commentary by the panel chairman, which was followed by formal papers, and in some instances included a lively question and answer session. The papers and most of the proceedings found their way into print and are recorded here in an effort to permanently capture the activities, challenges, contributions, and heroics of the coalition air forces and the airmen who fought during the Korean conflict.
Author: Wayne Thompson, Bernard C. Nalty Publisher: Government Printing Office ISBN: 9780160873034 Category : Korean War, 1950-1953 Languages : en Pages : 68
Book Description
Despite American success in preventing the conquest of South Korea by communist North Korea, the Korean War of 1950-1953 did not satisfy Americans who expected the Kind of total victory they had experienced in World War II. In that earlier, larger war, victory over Japan came after two atomic bombs destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, in Korea five years later, the United States limited itself to conventional weapons. Even after Communist China entered the war, Americans put China off-limits to conventional bombing as well as nuclear bombing. Operating within these limits, the U.S. Air force helped to repel two invasions of South Korea while securing control of the skies so decisively that other United Nations forces could fight without fear of air attack. This book tells the story of those limits from Invasion to Air Pressure as part of the Air Force's Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Edition.
Author: Major Lynn A. Stover Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing ISBN: 1786252740 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 117
Book Description
This study examines the historical record and primary source of conflict between the armed services over the issue of the effective employment of close air support during the Korean War. The study considers the impact of the single air asset manager on CAS employment during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The disagreement examined and explained in this study is the distinction and desire between the Navy-Marines control system and the Army-Air Force control system. The author evaluates the development of service and joint doctrine and the arguments over centralized and decentralized command and control in the execution of the air war. The thesis emphasizes CAS issues during the Korean War using General Keith B. McCutcheon’s writings and papers as a guide to develop and understand CAS employment, methodology, and effectiveness from World War II through Vietnam. The Korean War period significantly shaped the persistent argument concerning CAS employment among Marines, sailors, airmen, and soldiers and its value to a winning strategy. This study emphasizes General McCutcheon views on CAS employment and how he provided a template for cooperation during the Philippines Campaign. Cooperation and coordination as well as the role of doctrine are the primary themes throughout this study. Doctrine, and coordination and cooperation are necessary tools to develop the most effective means of employing CAS.
Author: Conrad C. Crane
Author: Conrad C. Crane
Author: Department of Defense
Author: Robert Frank Futrell
Author: 
Author: D. Clayton James
Author: Conrad C. Crane
Author: Air Force Historical Foundation. Symposium
Author: Robert Frank Futrell
Author: Wayne Thompson, Bernard C. Nalty
Author: Major Lynn A. Stover