Office of Air Force History

Airpower in Three Wars Office of Air Force History

Publisher Marketing: I began working on this book some months ago when a number of colleagues asked me to record my thoughts about the employment of airpower, especially tactical airpower, after 35 years in the profession. I hadn't any illusions of being blessed with special wisdom, but, as they said, no one else shared exactly my perspective on tactical airpower, and other professional airmen might find it useful to know how I saw things, particularly during the Vietnam years, whether they happened to approve of my perceptions or not. Very soon I realized that my perspective was in fact several perspectives, and none of them could be maintained in perfect isolation from the others. I had watched strategy, tactics, and technology evolve, and all three of these evolutions fascinated me in recollection. I had seen tactical airpower from the viewpoints of the greenest fighter pilot (in 1939), the senior air commander in our longest war, and almost every position in between: dozens of perspectives there, and all of them seemed valid and important to me. So my problem became one of choosing from among my many perspectives the few that seemed likely to offer the most to other airmen. Although I take most delight in recalling my experiences as a young fighter pilot, I had to admit that there's probably nothing unique about that perspective. Hundreds of others shared about the same experiences and could describe them as well or better than I. Thus I turned away (fellow fighter pilots will understand how difficult this was) from the temptation to spin stories about those days.