T-213 - The Evolution of USAF Air and Space Power

AIR AND SPACE STUDIES 200
The Evolution of USAF Air and Space Power
2016-2017 Edition
Jeanne M. Holm Center for Officer Accessions and Citizen Development

Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps
Academic Affairs Directorate
Mr. James C. Wiggins, Dean and Director
Dr. Kevin O’Meara, Chief, Commissioning Education Branch
Contributors
Mr. Marvin Haughton
Captain Angela Newman
Captain Jess Shipley
with articles by:

General T. Ross Milton
Dr. Rebecca Grant
Mr. John A. Tirpak
Mr. Daniel L. Haulman
Mr. John T. Correll
Mr. John L. Frisbee
Mr. Walter J. Boyne
Production Staff
Ms. Nicole Griffin, Tech Publications Specialist, Cover Design
Ms. Chanel Wilson, Tech Publications Specialist
Ms. Marche Hinson, Textbook Distribution
This text was developed under the guidance of Mr. James C. Wiggins, Dean and Director,
Academic Affairs Directorate, Holm Center, Maxwell AFB, AL.
This publication has been reviewed and approved by competent personnel of the preparing
command in accordance with current directives on doctrine, policy, essentiality, propriety,
and quality. The views and opinions expressed or implied in this publication do not carry
the official sanction of the Air Education and Training Command or the Department of the
Air Force.
Copyrighted materials used in this text have been reproduced by special arrangement
with the original publishers and/or authors. Such material is fully protected by the copyright
laws of the United States, and may not be further reproduced in whole or in part without
the expressed permission of the copyright owner.
Unless otherwise credited, photos and images in this text are provided courtesy of U.S.
Air Force, U.S. Government, or other public domain free-use websites. This book is used
solely for U.S. Air Force academic purposes and is provided to all registered students
free of charge.
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AIR AND SPACE STUDIES 200
Table of Contents
Leadership Studies (LS), Profession of Arms (PA), Communication Studies (CS),

Warfare Studies (WS), International Security Studies (ISS)
LESSON TITLE PAGE
Lesson 1 Introduction to AS200 4

Lesson 2 Airpower Through WWI (WS) 5
Lesson 3 Airpower: End of WWI Through WWII (WS) 24
Lesson 4 Airpower Through the Cold War, Part I (WS) 72
Lesson 5 Airpower Through the Cold War, Part II (WS) 110
Lesson 6 Airpower in the Post Cold War (WS) 168
Lesson 7 Airpower in the 21st Century (WS) 196

Table of Contents iii
4
Introduction to AS200
Cognitive Lesson Objective:

• Know the AS200 course material and the course requirements.
Cognitive Samples of Behavior:

• State the course objectives.
• Describe course concepts (overview).
• Identify proper classroom conduct and procedures.
• List student assignments and testing requirements.
• Describe the course grading criteria.
Affective Lesson Objective:

• Respond to the importance of the lesson overview.
Affective Sample of Behavior:

• Actively participate in classroom discussion.
Introduction to AS200 5
Airpower through WWI
Study Assignment:
• Read chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 of Air Force Basic Doctrine 1.
• Comprehend the importance of air and space power, the components that
help describe it, and the significance of it through the end of WWI.
• Define airpower.
• Define doctrine.
• List the principles of war.
• State the tenets of airpower.
• Recall the Air Force core functions.
• Describe the US Army’s initial reaction to the Wright Brothers’ heavier-than-air
flying machine.
• Define strategic bombing.
• State the impact of the allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany.
• List the major ideas espoused by Guilio Douhet.
• State lessons learned from the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne Offensives and
their impacts on Air Service doctrine.
Affective Lesson Objectives:
• Value to the importance of airpower and airpower advancements through
WWI.
• Discuss the importance of airpower and airpower advancements.
6
THE GENESIS OF AMERICAN AIR POWER
A
mericans took to the skies at an early date. Benjamin Franklin considered the
possibility of using balloons in warfare in 1783, only days after the first successful
hot-air balloon flights in France. John Sherburne, frustrated by the Army’s
ineffectiveness during the Seminole War of 1840, proposed using balloons for observation
above the wilderness that hid the adversary. John Wise, dismayed by the prospects of
a long and costly siege of Veracruz during the Mexican War, suggested using balloons
in 1846 for bombing defending forces, three years before Austria actually did so against
Venice.
John LaMountain and Thaddeus Lowe successfully launched manned reconnaissance
balloons in support of Union operations during the American Civil War. In late June 1861
Lowe’s map of Confederate positions in
Falls Church, Virginia, was the first
significant contribution of manned flight to
American warfare. Although the Union
lost the battle at Bull Run in July, a flight
by Lowe on 21 July allowed him to report
that the Confederates were not advancing
on Washington. He was thus able to help
prevent panic following the defeat. In
September he demonstrated the balloon’s
potential when he directed artillery fire at
Confederate positions. He went on to By means of such balloons as the Intrepid, shown being
establish the first US “Air Force,” the inflated during the Civil War battle at Fair Oaks outside
Balloon Service of the Army of the Richmond, Virginia, in the spring of 1862, the Union Army
conducted reconnaissance missions over enemy territory in
Potomac, although weather, technological America’s first use of air power.
limitations, bungling, and military
opposition prevented further development
and exploitation.
His Civil War experience convinced Brigadier General Adolphus Greely of the Army Signal
Corps that the balloon’s capabilities had been unrealized. As part of a special section
formed in 1892, his one balloon directed artillery fire during the Battle of San Juan Hill in
the Spanish- American War and reported the presence of the Spanish fleet at Santiago
de Cuba Harbor. This limited success with lighter-than-air balloons (enemy ground fire
destroyed the section’s balloon in Cuba) encouraged Greely and the Army to give Samuel
Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, $50,000 in 1898 to build a powered
heavier-than-air flying machine. The spectacular failures of Langley’s Aerodrome launched
over the Potomac River on 7 October and 8 December 1903, soured Army opinions on
the practicality of flight for several years. When Orville and Wilbur Wright succeeded in
the world’s first powered, heavier-than-air, controlled flight on 17 December 1903, the
Signal Corps expressed no interest. Establishing the Aeronautical Division of the Signal
Corps on 1 August 1907, the Army ignored the Wrights and their achievement. It preferred
Airpower through WWI 7

experimenting with the steerable airship or dirigible, then being perfected in Europe. The
desertion of a private cost the Aeronautical Division half of its enlisted strength, but did
not prevent the Army from ordering its first nontethered airship, Dirigible No. 1, for $6,750
in 1908.
The Wrights’ successes came to the attention of others, however, and President Theodore
Roosevelt directed the Army to entertain bids for an aircraft in late 1907. Meanwhile,
intrepid airmen pressed on. Lieutenant Frank Lahm became the first officer to fly in an
aircraft in early September 1908. Not even the death of Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge,
America’s first military aviation fatality, killed in what the New York Times called a “wreck
of bloodstained wood, wire, and canvas,” could stop the advance of military aviation.
On 2 August 1909, the Army awarded the
Wrights $25,000 for delivering Aeroplane
No. 1, and a $5,000 bonus for exceeding
specifications. The Aeronautical Division now
had one aircraft, but no pilots, ground crews,
or training establishment. Wilbur Wright
taught Lieutenants Frank Lahm, Benjamin
Foulois, and Frederic Humphreys to fly. (He
included Humphreys as a passenger on the
The Wright Military Flyer during flight tests held
at Fort Myer in northern Virginia just across the
world’s first night flight.) Scarce resources
Potomac River from Washington, D.C., 1908. Orville soon reduced America’s air force to one pilot
Wright was at the controls. (Foulois) flying one much-damaged, much-
repaired aircraft.
This was America’s air force until Congress approved $125,000 in 1911 for its expansion,
despite the objection of one member: “Why all this fuss about airplanes for the Army?
I thought we already had one.” Early Army flyers began stretching aviation’s limits in
Wright and Curtiss aircraft with bomb-dropping, photography, and strafing. The first
unit, 1st Aero Squadron, was formed on 8 December 1913. These achievements
convinced Congress to give the Army’s air force official status on 18 July 1914 as
the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, which absorbed the Aeronautical Division and its
1 squadron, 6 combat aircraft, 19 officers, and 101 enlisted men.
Orville Wright’s first flight in 1903 had lasted twelve seconds; by 1916 flights of four-
hours duration had become possible. This progress was soon tested. Brigadier General
John Pershing pursued Pancho Villa in Mexico from 1916 to 1917 to bring the Mexican
revolutionary to justice for attacking an American border town, Columbus, New Mexico.
Captain Benjamin Foulois, with ten pilots and eight aircraft of the 1st Aero Squadron,
struggled against winds, storms, and high mountains to locate Villa; but a series of
disasters, some comic, some tragic, stood in vivid contrast to aerial achievements on the
Western Front of the Great War in Europe that had begun two years earlier.
8
TRIAL AND ERROR IN WORLD WAR I
T
he potential of the airplane was proved in World War I when its use in critical
reconnaissance halted the initial German offensive against Paris. It was not used
to harass troops or drop bombs until two months into the war. On the basis of an
aviator’s report that the German Army had a large gap in its lines and was attempting
to swing wide and west around the British Army, British commander Sir John French
refused requests from the French to link up his Army with their forces to the east. At the
resulting battle of Mons southwest of Brussels on 23 August 1914, the British slowed the
overall German advance, forcing it to swing east of Paris. The Allies, on the basis of a
British aviator’s report of the move, stopped the Germans at the battle of the Marne from
6 to 9 September. The Germans, on the basis of one of their aviator’s observation of the
Allies’ concentration, retreated behind the Aisne River. These actions, spurred by aerial
observation, forced the combatants into fixed positions and initiated four years of trench
warfare.
When American aircrews arrived in France three years later to join the conflict, they found
mile after mile of fetid trenches protected by machine guns, barbed wire, and massed
artillery. The airplane’s primary roles remained reconnaissance and observation over the
trenches of both sides, into which were poured men, supplies, and equipment in huge
quantities easily seen from the air. Thousands of aviators fought and died for control of
the skies above armies locked in death struggles below.
In 1914 the US Army’s Aviation Section of the Signal Corps had five air squadrons and
three being formed. By 6 April 1917, when the United States declared war on Germany,
it had 56 pilots and fewer than 250 aircraft, all obsolete. Congress appropriated $54.25
million in May and June 1917 for “military aeronautics” to create a total of 13 American
squadrons for the war effort. However, French Premier Alexandre Ribot’s telegraphed
message to President Woodrow Wilson in late May revealed that the United States did
not yet comprehend the scale of the war. Ribot recommended that the Allies would need
an American air force of 4,500 aircraft, 5,000 pilots, and 50,000 mechanics by 1918 to
achieve victory. Trainer aircraft and spare parts would increase America’s contribution
to over 40,000 aircraft---this from a country that had produced only a few hundred, both
civilian and military, from 1903 to 1916.
An outpouring of patriotism accompanied the declaration of war in the United States. Talk
of “darkening the skies over Germany with clouds of US aircraft” stiffened Allied resolve.
It also appealed to the American people. Congress supported their sentiments when it
approved $640 million on 24 July 1917, the largest lump sum ever appropriated by that
body to that time, for a program to raise 354 combat squadrons.
President Wilson immediately created the Aircraft Production Board under Howard Coffin
to administer an expansion, but the United States had no aircraft industry, only several
shops that hand-built an occasional aircraft, and no body of trained workers. The spruce
industry, critical to aircraft construction, attempted to meet the enormous demand under

government supervision. A production record that approached a national disaster forced
Wilson on 21 May 1918, to establish a Bureau of Aircraft Production under John Ryan
and a separate Division of Military Aeronautics under Major General William Kenly. The
division would be responsible for training and operations and would replace the Aviation
Section of the Signal Corps. Perhaps as an indication of the Army’s attitude toward the
new air weapon, the two agencies remained without a single overall chief. Not until four
months before the end of the war did Wilson appoint Ryan Director of the Air Service and
Second Assistant Secretary of War in a late attempt to coordinate the two agencies.
American aircraft production fell far short of its goals despite President Wilson’s initiatives.
In June 1917 a mission led by Major Raynal Bolling to investigate conditions on the
Western Front, decided that America’s greatest contribution to the war besides its Airmen
would be its raw materials from which the Allies could produce the necessary aircraft in
Europe, rather than in the United States. This time-saving approach was not particularly
popular, given American chauvinism at the time. The United States would build engines,
trainer aircraft, and British-designed DH-4 bombers. It would buy combat aircraft from
France (4,881), Britain (258), and Italy (59).
American industry managed to turn out 11,754 aircraft, mostly trainers, before the end
of the war---a significant accomplishment. Detroit produced 15,572 Liberty engines, big
12-cylinder in-line liquid-cooled power plants of 400 horsepower that were more efficient
than other wartime engines. The Army set up ground schools at 8 universities, 27 primary
flying schools in the United States, and 16 advanced training schools in Europe. On
Armistice Day the Air Service had nearly 183,000 personnel filling 185 squadrons. One of
the first American Airmen to reach France was Major William “Billy” Mitchell, who studied
British and French aerial techniques and recommended the establishment of two air
forces, one to support ground forces and another to launch independent strategic attacks
against the sources of German strength. A dearth of aircraft and aircrews prevented the
development of the latter effort, and the 1917 Bolling mission had given the idea lowest
priority. American Expeditionary Force commander, General John Pershing, created a
divided tactical aerial force, with, first, Brigadier General William Kenly, then Benjamin
Foulois, and, finally, Mason Patrick as Chief of Air Service, American Expeditionary Force,
and Mitchell as Air Commander, Zone of Advance. A less-than-clear chain of command
insured a collision between Foulois and Mitchell, but Pershing wanted Mitchell in charge
of combat operations.
Some Americans had already acquired combat experience in France, serving with
French and British squadrons before the United States entered the war. Among the
most famous were members of the Lafayette Escadrille, including Norman Prince (five
victories) and Raoul Lufbery (seventeen victories). These veterans transferred to the
Air Service and provided the cadre for new squadrons arriving from the United States.
After advanced training, American squadrons joined French and British units for combat
experience. Only when American ground units were ready for combat did Air Service
squadrons join American armies. Flying French SPAD and Nieuport fighters and French
Breguet and British DH-4 bombers, all-American units under American command began
10
operations in March and April 1918. Lieutenants Alan Winslow and Douglas Campbell
gained America’s first aerial victories on 14 April 1918, in French Nieuport fighters armed
with British Vickers machine guns.
The United States may have been slow in developing aerial weapons, but its ground
commanders quickly put them to use. Airmen flew infantry contact patrols, attempting to
find isolated units and reporting their location and needs to higher headquarters. Of these
missions, the 50th Aero Squadron’s search for the “Lost Battalion” in the Meuse-Argonne
during the offensive of September and October 1918 is perhaps the most famous. Two
Airmen, pilot Harold Goettler and observer Erwin Bleckley flew several missions at low
altitude, purposely attracting German fire to find out at least where the “Lost Battalion”
was not. They paid with their lives but helped their squadron narrow its search. For their
heroism, Goettler and Bleckley won two of the four Medals of Honor awarded to American
Airmen during the war. The other two went to Eddie Rickenbacker and Frank Luke for
aerial combat.
Reconnaissance missions to determine the disposition and make-up of enemy forces
were critical and were usually carried out by aircraft flying east at low altitude until shot at.
Allied ground troops, for example, needed to know about German activity at the Valleroy
railroad yard during the battle of St. Mihiel or, best of all, that the “convoy of enemy horse-
drawn vehicles [was] in retreat along the road to Thiaucourt.”
Airman Gill Wilson wrote spiritedly of such missions in the following lines:
Pilots get the credit
But the gunner rings the bell
When we go to bomb the columns
On the road to Aix-la-Pelle!
The pilots of each side, attempting to prevent their counterparts from conducting tactical
reconnaissance, engaged in fierce air-to-air combat in aerial “dogfights” that evoked
images of medieval warfare and its code of chivalry. The men in the trenches welcomed
these solitary knights of the skies who were willing to take on the heavily-defended
German observation balloons and the artillery fire they controlled that was aimed at
anything that moved. More often than not, life was short in World War I and American
aviators lived it valiantly. Frank Luke spent only seventeen days in combat and claimed
four aircraft and fourteen balloons, the most dangerous of all aerial targets. Shot down at
age 21, he died resisting capture behind German lines. The United States awarded him
a Medal of Honor and named an air base after him. Raoul Lufbery claimed seventeen
victories before jumping from his own burning aircraft without a parachute. But more died
in crashes brought on by malfunctioning aircraft than in combat.
Low-level flight in close support of the infantry was exceedingly dangerous as it involved
strafing and bombing over enemy positions. The 96th Aero Squadron flew twelve day
bombardment aircraft in three missions against ground targets the first day of the St.
Mihiel offensive on 12 September 1918. The next day it mustered only four aircraft ready

for duty. Casualty rates of 50 percent or higher were not unusual. When Brigadier General
Billy Mitchell had his way, targets were farther to the rear and included rail centers and
bridges. One of his officers, Lieutenant Colonel Edgar Gorrell, developed a plan to bomb
Germany’s “manufacturing centers, commercial centers, and lines of communication.”
General Pershing approved the plan, but opposition from other ground commanders and
insufficient aircraft thwarted America’s nascent testing of strategic bombing.
As an American air force, the First Air Brigade (strengthened by French units) in June 1918
fought superior German forces during the battle of Chateau-Thierry, a bloody initiation
to full-scale combat for most American pilots. Mitchell, however, learned the lessons of
massing air power in the battle area and of seizing the offensive. This experience served
him well at St. Mihiel in September. With nearly 100 squadrons amounting to nearly
1,500 aircraft under his control, Mitchell organized two forces, one to provide escorted
reconnaissance and the other to serve as an independent striking force. With superior
numbers, mostly French, Mitchell’s Airmen seized the initiative, gained air superiority,
attacked enemy ground forces, and interdicted supplies flowing to the German front lines.
In the final action of the war, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in September and
October, Mitchell concentrated a largely American force to establish air superiority in
support of American ground operations.
(Please reference the “Focus On: St. Mihiel and an Aerial Armada” article following
the paragraph below for more detailed understanding of the St. Mihiel and Meuse-
Argonne offensives.)
By Armistice Day, on 11 November 1918, the Air Service had prepared and sent 45
squadrons to fight under Mitchell, with 140 more organizing in the United States. In
supporting the war the Air Service had about 750 American-piloted aircraft in France,
or about 10 percent of all Allied forces. 71 Americans became aces, downing 5 or more
enemy aircraft, led by Eddie Rickenbacker with 26 victories. His success paled compared
with Manfred von Richthofen’s (German) with 80 kills, Rend Fonck’s (French) with 75, and
Edward Mannock’s (British) with 73, but few claimed as many as quickly as the American.
The launching of 150 bombing attacks and the claiming of 756 enemy aircraft and 76
balloons in 7 months of combat and the losses of 289 aircraft, 48 balloons, and 237
crewmen did not turn the tide of war but were portentous of things to come. The airplane
had entered combat, and by eliminating the element of surprise through observation and
reconnaissance, it had helped Allied forces to victory on the Western Front.
12
Focus On:
ST. MIHIEL AND AN AERIAL ARMADA
W
orld War I ended on 18 August 1918 with the failed final German push at
the Marne. The Kaiser’s chancellor later remarked, “On the 18th even the
most optimistic among us knew that all was lost.” It is doubly tragic then,
that combat continued for another 90 days. Those last three months would prove to be
among the bloodiest of the war--for both sides.
By mid-August more than a million American doughboys had reached the front lines, and
General John J. Pershing was plotting an assault on the formidable St. Mihiel salient.
In their retreat the Germans themselves tried to straighten the line, fully aware that it
would be more defensible than the horseshoe shaped bulge they now held. As Pershing
and the other Allied generals plotted an offensive that would throw more than a half-
million doughboys against the salient, Colonel Billy Mitchell was quick to lay out his own
blueprints for the aerial side of the battle.
The St. Mihiel Offensive was more than the greatest success of Colonel Mitchell’s
distinguished career; it was perhaps, his finest moment as a politician/ commander. It
was the one time that he tempered his strong will and firm beliefs with a taciturn diplomacy
that kept the long meetings from turning hostile. With the confidence of General Pershing,
the glowing support of First Army commander General Hunter Liggett (one of the few who
truly appreciated air power), and the sympathy of the air-minded French, Colonel Mitchell
got the chance he wanted.
The first week of September was filled with secret movements, Colonel Mitchell’s Airmen
moving forward to advance aerodromes from which their commander would direct the
first-ever, united aerial attack on an enemy force. The armada included American,
French, and British aircraft--both fighters and bombers--all at the direction of a single
commander. Mitchell would coordinate the effort with the commanders on the ground
leading the infantry advance, another historical first overshadowed perhaps only by the
sheer number of aircraft involved--nearly 1,500 in all. It was the largest aerial armada in
history.
Mitchell was proud of his Airmen, men who loved him and would fly through hell for
him. Now he called upon them to accomplish what had never been done before. These
were a rare breed of fighting men, brash young cowboys like Frank Luke from Arizona,
daring race drivers like Eddie Rickenbacker, West Point graduates like Major Carl Tooey
Spaatz, efficient squadron commanders who had sat in a cockpit and traded bullets with
the Flying Circus like Harold Hartney. With the addition of the British air assets, even
the legendary Sir Hugh “Boom” Trenchard would fly his pilots at the direction of Colonel
Mitchell. It was a defining moment in military history, perhaps the exact moment in time
for which Billy Mitchell was born...until the weather intervened.

During the weeks of preparation Colonel Mitchell averaged only three hours of sleep
each night. He read reports of the day’s activities when night fell until 0200, rested
his eyes briefly, and then arose to personally observe practice maneuvers and
preparations at 0500. Running on sheer adrenaline, Mitchell was in no mood to hear
news on 11 September that the generals wanted to postpone the anticipated next-day
launch of the St. Mihiel Offensive because of the rain and the fog that had set in early.
The previous day Colonel Mitchell had flown over the German lines with his French friend
Paul Armenguad as an observer, and witnessed lines of enemy infantry pulling back
in retreat. The enemy was anticipating an offensive push against the salient and were
withdrawing quickly.
As promptly as news of the postponement reached Colonel Mitchell he headed for
Pershing’s Headquarters, where a meeting of the generals was already in progress.
Colonel Mitchell was the youngest, and lowest ranking man in a room that was about to
decide the fate of his moment in time.
“Pretty bad weather we’re facing,” stated an engineering officer. Around the room heads
nodded in ascent...engineers usually knew what could and could not be accomplished.
“What’s the weather got to do with it?”, snapped Colonel Mitchell.
“The rain always holds up our light railways that we use to get ammunition to our artillery.
That goes for our water supply too. I think it’s best if we hold off on this thing for a few
days.” Again heads nodded in agreement around the table, and Colonel Mitchell could
see his moment slipping away.
Earnestly, but with a patience and uncharacteristic demeanor for the man “Boom”
Trenchard had once said would go far if he could “break his habit of trying to convert
opponents by killing them,” Colonel Mitchell pleaded his case. He told of his flights over
the salient, of witnessing columns of German soldiers in full retreat. He predicted that the
battle for the St. Mihiel salient wouldn’t be much of a battle.
“We must jump the Germans now!”, he admonished. “I’ve seen their movement to the
rear with my own eyes. Forget the artillery if it means delay. If we advance fast, the
artillery would probably shoot a lot of our own men anyway.”
Colonel Mitchell’s words seemed to fall on deaf ears, and around the room all eyes were
on the engineering officer who was calling for a postponement. Colonel Mitchell had
lost his most important debate with everyone in the room...except for the one man that
mattered. General Pershing looked up at his staff and pronounced:
“We will attack, without delay!”
American pilots had indeed been fair-weather fliers prior to the St. Mihiel Offensive. With
the decision to proceed on 12 September, the brave young men took to the air in spite of
the fog and the rain.
14
Colonel Mitchell organized his assets into two attack brigades of 400 or more planes
each, one assigned to attack the right side of the salient while the other penetrated to the
enemy rear to cut off all communication and supply. It was an impressive air show that
inspired men on the ground and amazed even the airmen themselves. Pilot Kenneth
Littauer spoke of the massive formation and said: “I didn’t believe my eyes, because
we’d never seen such a thing before. I happened to be standing on the air field when this
damned thing started to go over. Then it went and it went...it was awfully impressive.”
The ground war was over on the first day, and the air war became almost nonexistent.
Colonel Mitchell’s pilots swept the skies over the Western Front clean almost immediately,
and then patrolled them continuously to demonstrate their mastery of the heavens. In just
three days, the combined forces took back a formidable enemy redoubt that had been
held for four years, captured 16,000 Germans, 443 artillery pieces, and created a new
threat to the enemy stronghold at Metz. General Pershing couldn’t have been more
pleased and wrote Colonel Mitchell stating:
Colonel Mitchell was
elated, not so much in “Please accept my sincere congratulations on the successful
the praise but in the and very important part taken by the Air Force under your
validation of everything command in the first offensive of the American Army. The or-
he had argued for over ganization and control of the tremendous concentration of air
the previous year. At last forces...is as fine a tribute to you personally as is the courage
he was convinced that and nerve shown by your officers a signal proof of the high
his Air Service would be morale which permeates the service under your command.
recognized for what it
was, the powerful war- “I am proud of you all!”
winning military arm of
the future. Colonel Mitchell himself was a hero in France, both among his own men and
among the populace. His favor with General Pershing was evident in October when he
received promotion to the temporary rank of Brigadier General. (Temporary promotions
such as this during wartime had a long history in the Army, and it was expected that
after the war Mitchell would return to his earlier rank of Colonel. When the return to his
permanent rank occurred a few years later it was misinterpreted by many as a disciplinary
move. In fact, Brigadier General Mitchell maintained his rank much longer than most
other officers who received temporary promotions during the war.)
Following his tremendous success in the St. Mihiel Offensive, Brigadier General Mitchell
committed his forces to a nearly independent role in the Argonne Offensive. His fighter
pilots flew daily and, as Brigadier General Mitchell reported, “There is nothing to beat
them in the world!” Meanwhile he pursued his theories of tactical bombing, raining
tons of explosives on German bridges, airdromes, railroads and supply depots. The
psychological impact of the Air Service’s supremacy on the German morale demonstrated
just one more powerful advantage of a massive air force.

Brigadier General Mitchell’s men further endeared themselves to the weary infantrymen
by continuing to coordinate their efforts with the ground war. Big two-seat DeHavillands
dropped supplies to beleaguered units and pursuit airplanes flew low over infantrymen
to shield them from German airplanes. As the advance turned into a rout, the quick
pace could lead to confusion and dangerous situations. Once, Brigadier General Mitchell
became aware of a large congestion of trucks at a village crossroads that could have
become instantly susceptible to a damaging attack from the German Air Force. Without
pause he sent a flight of 320 Allied aircraft to patrol the area and protect the forces on the
ground until the traffic jam could be cleared.
Ever looking to the future, in late October Brigadier General Mitchell came to General
Pershing with a bold new idea. The Allied advance would certainly slow with the onset of
winter, but an Allied offensive was already being planned for the spring of 1919 to finish
the job started at St. Mihiel and at last end the war. Brigadier General Mitchell’s idea was
preposterous at the time to all who heard it, yet General Pershing gave it an attentive ear.
He had learned that when Brigadier General Mitchell saw the future, he had a habit of
making it come to pass. Brigadier General Mitchell’s new concept was never employed
because the war ended long before anyone would have believed possible the previous
summer, and there would be no spring offensive necessary.
Brigadier General Mitchell’s last great scheme of World War I is of note, however, despite
the fact that he would not see it employed in his lifetime.
In the fall of 1918 there were a few big Handley-Page airplanes in the Allied arsenal that
were capable of carrying a dozen or more men. Brigadier General Mitchell hoped to build
up this part of his command throughout the winter so forces could fly deep into Germany
to drop American soldiers behind enemy lines by parachute during the spring offensive
that never came. It was indeed a preposterous idea, but now when Billy Mitchell had an
idea, nobody ruled it out.
16
Focus On: Leadership
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS—
WILBUR (1867-1912) AND ORVILLE (1871-1948)
• Fathers of flight
• Invented airplane (1903); first sustained fight (1905)
• Advocated airplane’s military utility (US Army, 1909)
• Established first US civilian flying school
T
he world’s most famous inventive partners, the Wright Brothers, were
born four years apart -- Wilbur on April 16, 1867, near Millville, Ind., and
Orville on Aug. 19, 1871, in Dayton, Ohio, to Milton and Susan Wright.
As youngsters, Wilbur and Orville had their interest in flying sparked by a toy helicopter-
like top their father gave them. Neither graduated from high school or attended college, but
they had a thirst for knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit. The brothers began to refer
to themselves as “The Wright Brothers” when they started a printing firm at the ages of 22
and 18. Before writing the Smithsonian Institute for information on aeronautical research
in 1899, the brothers owned a bicycle shop that repaired and made bicycles. In 1900,
Wilbur also wrote to French-born gliding pioneer Octave Chanute who recommended
that the Wright Brothers study gliding tests carried out by a number of researchers.
Of all the early aviators, Wilbur alone recognized the need to control a flying machine in its three
axes of motion: pitch, roll and yaw. His solution to the problem of control was “wing warping.”
In August 1900, Wilbur built his first glider. He then contacted the U.S. Weather Bureau
for information on windy regions of the country. He chose a remote sandy area off the
coast of North Carolina named Kitty Hawk, where winds averaged 13 mph. He and Orville
journeyed to Kitty Hawk where they tested the 1900 glider, and subsequent 1902 glider.
Having designed a propeller with the same principles they used to design their wings,
Wilbur and Orville built their own four-cylinder, 12-horsepower engine. The 1903 Flyer
was constructed in sections in the back room of their cycle shop in Dayton, and shipped
to Kitty Hawk. On Dec.14, 1903, Wilbur won a coin toss and made the first attempt to
fly the machine. He stalled it on take-off, causing some minor damage. The plane was
repaired, and Orville made the next attempt on December 17. At 10:35 a.m., he made
the first heavier-than-air, machine powered flight in the world. In a flight lasting only 12
seconds and covering just 120 feet, the Wright Brothers opened the era of aviation.
News of the Wrights’ feat was met with early skepticism, especially from the United
States government who had already funded a number of failed flying experiments. Yet,

while Wilbur set sail for Europe to promote the Wright Flyer overseas, Orville headed
to Washington, D.C. to advocate the airplane’s military utility and to demonstrate their
flying machine in hopes of winning government and army contracts. In July 1909, Orville
completed demonstration flights for the U.S. Army, and the Wright brothers would later
be awarded the government contract for the first military aircraft, selling the plane for
$30,000.
The Wright brothers’ extraordinary success continued to led to contracts not just with the
United States government but in Europe as well, and they soon became wealthy business
owners. Seven years after the Wright brothers successfully completed their historic first
powered heavier-than-air flight, they found themselves in Montgomery, Alabama where
they established the first civilian flying school in the United States.
Wilbur died on May 30, 1912 of typhoid fever. Orville was awarded the Collier Trophy in
1913 for a device that balanced airplanes automatically. He sold the Wright Company and
retired in 1915. However, he continued working on aeronautical developments at his own
company, the Wright Aeronautical Laboratory. He died Jan. 30, 1948. The Kill Devil Hill
National Monument at Kitty Hawk is now the Wright Brothers National Monument.
18
COLONEL EDGAR S. GORRELL (1891-1945)
• Pursued Gen Francisco “Pancho” Villa(Mexican Expedition)

• Designed first “strategical” bombing plan—framework for industrial interdiction
employed during World War II
• First Air Transport Association (ATA) of America president
• Advocated aviation safety—led to creation of modern-day Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA)
I
n 1917 the great armies of Europe remained locked in a struggle along the trenches
of the western front. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, nearly 80,000
British soldiers had been killed or wounded; similarly, the Battle of Verdun “consumed
the young men of a medium-sized town” every morning and every afternoon for the 10
months it lasted. Leaders on both sides sought an alternative to the carnage of “modern”
war. Edgar S. Gorrell—a virtually unknown major assigned to the technical section of the
newly arrived US Air Service—emerged as one such leader.
Gorrell graduated from West Point in 1912 and then spent two years as an infantryman
in Alaska before transferring to the Signal Corps, where he joined the 1st Aero Squadron,
serving under Gen John J. Pershing in Mexico. On one of his flying missions in Mexico,
Gorrell ran out of gas and was stranded in the desert for several days before being
rescued. Upon returning to his unit, he began to criticize the poor equipment US pilots
were forced to use, both in terms of actual aircraft components and the signals and
communication equipment used on land. In 1917 he was promoted to captain, and in
World War I he became the chief engineering officer for the Air Service and eventually the
chief of staff for the Air Service, with the rank of colonel. After the war, Gorrell remained
in Europe representing the United States at conferences and peace talks.
Aware of the promise of emerging aircraft technology, he initiated a study of the military
situation and the potential for bombardment aviation to contribute decisively to the
struggle. Using analytic techniques that would become forerunners of modern targeteering
principles, Gorrell maintained that a heavy air attack on key industries supporting the
German war effort could success-fully impede the supply of munitions to the front.
Gorrell designed an aerial operations plan entitled “Strategical Bombardment.” Drawing
heavily on ideas borrowed from British and Italian theorists and aviators, Gorrell argued
that modern armies could be compared to a steel drill. The hardened steel drill bit
represented an army’s formidable combat power: if the more vulnerable shank (the
industrial and societal effort supporting that army) could be broken, the drill would prove
useless. WWI ended before his plan could be executed. Lawrence Kuter would later

capture the irony of Gorrell’s work by characterizing it as “the earliest, clearest and least
known statement of the American conception of air power.” After the war, Gorrell turned
his energies to producing a lessons learned historical analysis of WWI air operations.
Under his direction, in 1919 the Air Service drafted two manuals: “Notes on the
Employment of the Air Service from the General Staff Viewpoints” and “Tentative Manual
for the Employment of Air Service.” Despite Gorrell’s explicit advocacy for strategic
bombardment as an independent course of action, both manuals emphasized airpower’s
role in support of ground operations (i.e., the Army). Nonetheless, Gorrell’s brief foray
into independent airpower theory development would carry long-term implications:
during the 1930s, the Air Corps Tactical School faculty rediscovered the “Gorrell Plan”
and used it as the basis for a more sophisticated theory of targeting, an approach focused
on incapacitating an adversary’s “industrial web.” An adaptation of Gorrell’s “strategical
bombardment” concept, WWII air operations interdicted German supply lines, thereby
ensuring Allied victory in Europe.
Colonel Gorrell resigned his Army commission in March 1920 and joined the automobile
business. He served as the vice president of Marmon Motor Car Company until 1925. He
worked his way up the corporate ladder, becoming vice president, director and general
manager, and then president of the Stutz Motor Car Company of America. Despite this
brief venture into the automotive field, Gorrell never completely separated himself from
airpower development or the policy process that guided its employment.
As a result of the Air Mail Scandal, in 1934 he sat on the Special Committee on the Army
Air Corps, also known as the Baker Board. While Gorrell and his colleagues did not
advocate establishing an independent air service, they did establish the basis for eventual
separation by recommending the Army establish General Headquarters Air Force, giving
it responsibility for all aviation combat units within the United States.
In January 1936, Gorrell returned to his roots, re-entering the aviation world when the
ATA elected him as its first president. Through this organization, he promoted safety
in civil aeronautics and became a vocal advocate for the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938,
the law that provided for government control and regulation of civil aeronautics. Gorrell
continued to support civil aeronautics until his death in 1945.
20
CAPTAIN EDDIE RICKENBACKER
• He had 26 confirmed aerial victories while engaging in 134 dog-fights during World
War I.
• He was the last witness for the defense in the court-martial of Gen Billy Mitchell in
1925.
C
apt. Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was the American “Ace of Aces” in World War I.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1890; he gained fame as a race car driver before joining the
service. He started in the U. S. Army as a chauffeur to U.S. Army Gen. John J. Pershing.
He enlisted in the Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps at New York City and entered active
duty the same day, May 25, 1917. After arriving in France, he was transferred to the U.S.
Air Service and sent to Tours to learn to fly where he remained until October 1917. He
was then honorably discharged to accept a commission as a first lieutenant in the Signal
Officers Reserve Corps. After receiving his commission he was made engineering officer at
the U.S. flying school at Issoudun because of his unusual knowledge of gasoline engines.
When the first group of newly-trained U.S. pilots prepared to leave for the
Front, Rickenbacker requested to go with them. His request was approved by
Maj. Carl Spaatz and Rickenbacker was assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron,
the famous “Hat in the Ring” squadron, named because of their insignia.
Almost immediately he demonstrated his exceptional combat ability and by the end of
the war, he was the nation’s leading ace with 26 confirmed victories (22 aircraft and 4
balloons), despite the fact that through most of June, July and August 1918, he had not been
permitted to fly combat missions because of severe ear infections and was a patient at the
American Red Cross hospital. He was personally chosen by Gen. Billy Mitchell to assume
command of the 94th Aero Squadron the day before the Meuse-Argonne offensive began.
On Sept. 25, 1918, he was patrolling over the lines near Billy, France. He spotted five German
Fokkers which were protecting two Halberstadts. He dived on them, shooting down one of
the Fokkers, he then attacked one of the Halberstadts, shooting it down also. In his dedication
to victory in the air, Rickenbacker disregarded the odds of seven to one against him.
On Nov. 6, 1930, President Herbert Hoover awarded the Medal of Honor to

Rickenbacker for his bravery above and beyond the call of duty for the attack near Billy.
His citation reads: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in
action against the enemy near Billy, France, September 25, 1918. While on a voluntary patrol
over the lines, Lieutenant Rickenbacker attacked 7 enemy planes (5 type Fokker, protecting
2 type Halberstadt). Disregarding the odds against him, he dived on them and shot down 1
of the Fokkers out of control. He then attacked 1 of the Halberstadts and sent it down also.”

His other decorations included eight Distinguished Service Crosses, World
War I Victory Medal with battle clasps for Champaigne-Marne, Aisne-Marne,
St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne and Oise-Aisne Offensives and Defensive Sector.
The French awarded him their Legion of Honor (chevalier) under decree of the
President of France and two French War Crosses (Croix de Guerre with Palm).
On his return home, he was assigned to the Air Service Depot at Garden City, N.Y. and later to
the Division of Military Aeronautics in Washington, D.C. His tour of active duty was terminated
in January 1919. He went back into the automobile business by working for General Motors,
and eventually came to control Eastern Airlines. He was also appointed as a specialist with
the Officers Reserve Corps as a colonel until May 20, 1934, when five-year term expired.
He died July 23, 1973. He is buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio. The now-
closed Rickenbacker Air Force Base, Ohio, was named in his honor.
22
GUILIO DOUHET
• Regarded as one of the first military strategists to recognize the predominant role
aerial warfare would play in twentieth-century battle.
• Known as the father of airpower, Douhet’s theories are still popular among modern
military aviators.
• Court-martialed and imprisoned for a year during World War I.
• Published Command of the Air in 1921.
G
uilio Douhet was born in Italy in 1869. He came from a military family, and he
served as a professional artillery officer in the Italian Army. Although not a pilot,
he was appointed as the commander of Italy’s first aviation battalion. During World
War I, Douhet was so critical of the leadership of the Italian High Army Command that he
was court-martialed and imprisoned for a year. However, his criticisms were validated
in 1917 in the disastrous Battle of Caporetto, in which Italians suffered over 300,000
casualties and lost most of their trench artillery.
After the war, when Mussolini came to power, Douhet was restored to a place of honor.
He passed his remaining years writing about and speaking out for airpower. Douhet
published Command of the Air in 1921. This book quickly became known in America
through partial translations and word of mouth, but it did not appear in a published English
version until 1942, twelve years after Douhet died.
Douhet’s theories on airpower have had a lasting effect on airpower employment. The
major premise of Douhet’s theory was his belief that during war, a quick victory could
be won by early air attack on the enemy’s vital centers, while surface forces worked to
contain the enemy on the ground. Douhet differed from other prominent early theorists by
proposing that civilian populations be directly targeted as part of the air campaign.

SIR HUGH MONTAGUE TRENCHARD
• Commissioner of the London metropolitan police from 1931 to 1935.

• He learned to fly at age 40.
• Trenchard and Billy Mitchell were contemporaries that shared many similar views.
• Created a baronet in 1919, a baron in 1930, a viscount in 1936, and was made
Knight Commander of the Bath in 1918.
H
ugh Trenchard was well along in his military career when he learned to fly at
age 40. He fought much of World War I as the head of the Royal Flying Corps in
France and was firm in his vision of aviation as an auxiliary to the army. At first,
Trenchard opposed the creation of an independent air force, and he even opposed the
idea of strategic bombing. He was, however, a firm believer in offensive operations for
air forces. Like ground commanders of the time, he believed in the massed offensive as
the key to victory. Only in Trenchard’s case, this idea of mass involved aircraft in the air.
Unfortunately, the Royal Flying Corps suffered substantial losses as a result of his
commitment to the massed offensive. Nonetheless, Trenchard ended up in command
of the Independent Air Force in France in 1918, which was created in response to the
German bombing of London. A considerable portion of the Independent Air Force’s efforts
was in support of the Allied armies, and the war ended before the Independent Air Force
could conduct much strategic bombing.
When he returned to the United Kingdom, Trenchard was appointed as Chief of the Air
Staff of the Royal Air Force, or RAF. Soon after, he became an advocate of strategic
bombing. He remained in his post for the first decade of the RAF’s existence. Trenchard
had an influence on the initial founding of many of the RAF’s ideas and institutions.
Trenchard’s ideas were at the center of RAF doctrine manuals and they were embedded
in the curriculum at the RAF Staff College.
Trenchard’s theories on airpower have had a lasting effect on airpower employment. The
major premise of his theory was his belief that during war, victory could be achieved by
bombing enemy vital centers and thus breaking the enemy’s will to fight. Trenchard’s
theories regarding airpower had a significant impact on many nations during this time.
Trenchard and Billy Mitchell were contemporaries that shared many similar views, yet
Mitchell often pointed to the Royal Flying Corps as a model for independent airpower.
24
Airpower: End of WWI through WWII

• Comprehend the significance of airpower from the end of WWI through the
end of WWII.
• Describe the general mood of the country and the condition of the Air Service
at the conclusion of WWI.
• Identify the major contribution Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell made
toward the autonomy of the Air Force.
• Outline the key theories of ACTS staff members in the 1930s.
• Identify the significance of Air War Plans Division Plan #1.
• State the significance of combining GHQ Air Force and the Army Air Corps on
20 June 1941.
• State the most important lesson in air warfare learned in North Africa.
• Explain the lessons learned with strategic bombing in Europe.
• State the unique tactics used with tactical airpower in the Pacific Theater
during WWII.
• Describe the use and importance of strategic airpower in the Pacific Theater
during WWII.
• Respond to the importance of air power advancements from the end of WWI
through the end of WWII.
• Actively participate in classroom discussions.
Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 25

ORGANIZATION AND TECHNOLOGY
The scale of destruction and bloodshed in World War I was truly shocking. No one
could have imagined 10 million dead and 21 million wounded soldiers or 9 million dead
civilians. A generation had been slaughtered in the trenches, the events witnessed by 2
million American servicemen who went home from “over there,” convinced that such a
war should never be fought again. In its aftermath, diplomats pursued collective security
through the League of Nations; the Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as an instrument
of national policy; the Locarno Pact recognizing the inviolability of European borders;
and the Washington, London, and Geneva disarmament treaties and talks. In Germany,
Airmen sought to restore mobility to the battlefield, joining aircraft and tanks to create
blitzkrieg warfare. In America Airmen strove for the coup degrace-strategic bombing
directly against the vital centers of a nation’s war-making capability.
American Airmen came back from France with a unique perspective on modern war.
Josiah Rowe, of the 147th Aero Squadron, wrote of the World War I battlefield as “a
barren waste, broken only by shell holes, trenches and barbed wire, with not one living
thing in sight.” He was “glad to get away from such gruesome scenes” by climbing into the
sky in his airplane. Billy Mitchell wrote that the Allies could cross the front lines “in a few
minutes” in their aircraft, whereas “the armies were locked in the struggle, immovable,
powerless to advance, for three years. It looked as though the war would go on indefinitely
until either the airplanes brought [it to an end] or the contending nations dropped from
sheer exhaustion.”
American Airmen knew that aircraft lacked the range, speed, and reliability for strategic
bombing, but they had faith that technology could overcome any restrictions. They also
knew the importance of concentrating on basic objectives such as winning air superiority
or interdicting the front, both of which, they believed, required an independent air force.
They had caught tantalizing glimpses of what strategic bombing could do to an enemy’s
industrial centers. They saw the effectiveness of offense and the futility of defense against
a determined aerial assault.
For these and other servicemen, aircraft seemed the answer to the slaughter of trench
warfare. German Airmen soon envisioned air power as mobile artillery accompanying fast-
moving armored units (blitzkrieg warfare). American Airmen, however, saw air power as
an independent strategic force that could bring an enemy nation to its knees. Throughout
history, an attacking army fought its way through a defending army to get to its enemy’s
vital centers. Strategic bombers would fly over the army to strike at the enemy’s heart. Air
leaders such as Billy Mitchell believed that with aircraft future wars would be shorter and
less bloody.
During World War I America’s air service had not coalesced. Afterwards it had to be built in
an atmosphere of antiwar fervor and tight congressional budgets. In addition, the U.S. Army
and U.S. Navy, viewing the air service as their auxiliary arms and a supporting weapon,
placed obstacles in the way of its further development. The President’s Aircraft Board,
26
better known as the Morrow Board for its chairman, the banker Dwight Morrow, called
by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925 to evaluate the air service’s call for independence,
reinforced this view: “The next war may well start in the air but in all probability will wind
up, as the last war did, in the mud.” Evolving technology and irrepressible flyers, however,
drove the air service in a different direction.
Few in the air service were particularly keen on flying close air support in trench warfare.
Most Airmen thought it unglamorous, marginally effective, and dangerous. What then
could air power do, especially with advanced technology? The War Department General
Staff already knew what it wanted from its Airmen--close air support, reconnaissance,
interdiction, and air superiority over the battlefield. The Dickman Board, named for its
chairman, Major General Joseph Dickman, appointed in 1919 by General Pershing to
evaluate the lessons of the war, concluded: “Nothing so far brought out in the war shows
that aerial activities can be carried on, independently of ground forces, to such an extent
as to affect materially the conduct of the war as a whole.”
The air service could hardly contradict this judgment. Its heavy bomber at the time was
the French-built Breguet. A veteran of the Great War with a range of 300 miles and a top
speed of 100 miles per hour, it could only carry a 500-pound bomb load. In the postwar
demobilization, by 1920 the air service was reduced to fewer than 2,200 officers and 8,500
enlisted men. To formulate basic doctrine for the fledgling air force and train officers, Air
Service Chief Major General Charles Menoher established the Air Service Tactical School
at Langley Field in Virginia, later to become the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field
in Alabama. He made Brooks and Kelly Fields in Texas responsible for flight training and
the Engineering Division at McCook Field in Ohio, later to become the Materiel Division at
nearby Wright Field, responsible for flight technology. Congress provided the air service a
measure of independence, changing it from an auxiliary force to an offensive force equal
to the artillery and infantry, by creating the U.S. Army Air Corps on July 2, 1926.
Other aerial pioneers sought to test the versatility of aircraft through aerial exploration
and discovery in a succession of record-setting flights. In 1921 Lieutenant John Macready
climbed to 35,409 feet, higher than anyone before. In 1923 Macready and Lieutenant
Oakley Kelly flew a Fokker T-2 nonstop across the width of the United States. In 1924
several air service crews led by Major Frederick Martin took 175 days to fly around the
world. In 1925 Lieutenants Jimmy Doolittle and Cy Bettis won the Pulitzer and Schneider
Cup speed races for the air service. Major Carl Spatz (later spelled Spaatz), Captain Ira
Eaker, Lieutenant Elwood Quesada, and Sergeant Roy Hooe flew the Fokker trimotor
Question Mark to a record duration of 150 hours in 1929, displaying the great promise
of inflight refueling. Doolittle and Lieutenant Albert Hegenberger achieved what the New
York Times called the “greatest single step forward in [aerial] safety”—a series of blind
flights from 1929 to 1932 that opened the night and clouded skies to flying. Only the Air
Corps’ assignment to deliver air mail in the first half of 1934, called “legalized murder”
by Eddie Rickenbacker because of the 12 lives it claimed, detracted from the image that
these aerial pioneers were helping to create.

Record-breaking military flights, alongside trailblazing civilian achievements by Charles
Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, represented the public side of a revolution in aviation
technology. The staff at the Engineering Division, and later the Materiel Division, worked
with American industry and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (predecessor
of the National Air and Space Administration) to develop essential technologies such as
sodium-cooled engine valves, high octane gasoline, tetraethyl lead knock suppressants,
stressed duraluminum aircraft structures, cantilevered wings, superchargers,
turbosuperchargers, retractable landing gear, engine cowlings, radial engines, variable
pitch constant speed propellers, and automatic pilots. The two-engine Keystone bomber
of the 1920s, a biplane constructed of steel tubes and wires and fabric surfaces, with an
open cockpit and fixed landing gear, could fly 98 miles per hour for 350 miles with one ton
of bombs. A decade later Boeing’s four-engine B-17 bomber could fly nearly 300 miles
per hour for 800 miles with over two tons of bombs.
How would America’s military aviators use this technology in war? The Army General Staff
wanted to employ tactical air power “in direct or indirect support of other components of
the Nation’s armed forces.” It believed the primary target was the adversary’s Army. The
most vocal opponent of this view was Assistant Chief of the Air Service, Brigadier General
Billy Mitchell, who saw in strategic bombing the proper use of air power. Close air support
and interdiction, he asserted, only perpetuated trench warfare and the horrors of World-
War I-like slaughter. He argued for a force that could strike directly at an enemy’s vitals,
“centers of production of all kinds, means of transportation, agricultural areas, ports and
shipping,” forcing “a decision before the ground troops or sea forces could join in battle.”
Mitchell’s actions created opponents as well as adherents. A series of highly publicized
ship-bombing tests (tactical airpower display) begun in 1921 overshadowed the ideas he
had espoused in books (strategic airpower) such as Winged Defense: The Development
and Possibilities of Modem Air Power-Economic and Military. Air service bombers sank
several unmanned, anchored ships, including battleships. Mitchell’s apparent success,
despite poor bombing accuracy, diverted both the public’s and the Congress’s attention
from more critical aerial achievements and issues of the period. Mitchell’s troubles with
Army and Navy leaders eventually led to his court martial after he spoke intemperately
about the crash of the airship Shenandoah in 1925. (He blamed the loss on “incompetency,
criminal negligence, and almost treasonable administration.”) President Coolidge, famous
for his reticence and nicknamed “Silent Cal,” expressed a widely-held view when he
contended, “General Mitchell [has] talked more in the last three months than I [have] in
my whole life.” (Please reference the “Focus On: The Billy Mitchell Court-Martial”
article at the end of this section.)
Behind such scenes, Chief of the Air Corps Major General James Fechet urged his
officers in 1928 to look beyond the battlefield, beyond close air support, and find a way
for the Air Corps to win a war independently. He imposed only three limitations: First,
the Air Corps had to get the most for any money available. Second, civilians could not
be targets of aerial attack. Secretary of War Newton Baker had ruled earlier that doing
so “constituted an abandonment of the time-honored practice among civilized people of
restricting bombardment to fortified places or to places from which the civilian population
28
had an opportunity to be removed.” Americans would not undertake terror raids, he said,
“on the most elemental ethical and humanitarian grounds.” Third, anything the Air Corps
did would have to solve or avoid the evils of trench warfare.
One officer who answered Fechet’s challenge was Lieutenant Kenneth Walker.
Conventional wisdom taught that while Airmen achieved high accuracy when they bombed
from low altitudes, they exposed themselves to deadly ground fire. Walker showed that
daylight high-altitude precision bombing was superior to low-altitude bombing and provided
greater survivability, explosive force, and, ironically, accuracy. (Bombs released at low
altitudes tumbled and ricocheted when they hit the ground.) He wrote, “Bombardment
missions are carried out at high altitudes, to reduce the possibilities of interception by
hostile pursuit and the effectiveness of anti-aircraft gun fire and to increase the explosive
effect of the bombs.” The keys to attaining accuracy from high altitudes were Carl Norden’s
new M-series bombsights, designed under Navy contract, but destined to equip Air Corps
bombers beginning in 1933.
At Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama, Major Donald Wilson and the faculty of the Air
Corps Tactical School proposed in the early 1930s to destroy an enemy’s ability to resist
by bombing what Wilson called the “vital objects of a nation’s economic structure that
tend to paralyze the nation’s ability to wage war and the hostile will to resist.’’ Because of
America’s opposition to attacking civilians or non-military targets, this bombing would be
aimed not directly at an enemy’s will, but at the machines and industries that supported
that will and its military defenses. The destruction of an enemy’s vital industries would
destroy its ability to continue to wage war. Wilson viewed high-altitude precision bombing
as “an instrument which could cause the collapse of this industrial fabric by depriving the
web of certain essential elements---as few as three main systems such as transportation,
electrical power, and steel manufacture would suffice.”
The technological innovations of the 1930s, which so profoundly inspired the ideas of
Walker and Wilson among others, were applied in particular to the large aircraft demanded
by America’s airlines, and they created a curious situation-large bombers flew faster than
small fighters. Thus was born the conviction among Airmen, as expressed by Brigadier
General Oscar Westover: “No known agency can frustrate the accomplishment of a
bombardment mission.” The B-17 of 1935 could reach 252 miles per hour at high altitudes,
compared with the P-26 front-line fighter, which could not exceed 234. Because speed
would allow a bomber to overcome enemy aerial defenses, strategic bombing became
the focus of air power development for Mitchell, Walker, Wilson, Wright Field’s engineers,
and such Air Corps leaders as Brigadier General Henry “Hap” Arnold, commanding the
1st Bombardment Wing, who labored to create the tactical formations, flying techniques,
and organization needed for this new kind of warfare. So while the Air Corp Tactical
Schools (ACTS)original mission was to teach air strategy and tactics it changed in the
mid 1930’s from an emphasis on ground support to strategic bombing. Billy Mitchell’s
key followers at the ACTS believed future wars would be decided by airpower and so the
airplane would be a major offensive weapon of modern forces moving forward.

Upon the recommendation of a War Department committee, known as the Baker Board
(named for former Secretary of War, Newton Baker), Congress established the General
Headquarters Air Force (GHQAF) on March 1, 1935. This first American “named” air
force, under the command of Brigadier General Frank Andrews and headquartered at
Langley Field in Virginia, controlled all offensive aviation in the nine corps areas of the
United States, including organization, training, and operations. Powerful opponents in
the Army separated the GHQAF from the Air Corps under Major General Westover, in
charge of individual training, procurement, doctrine, and supply. The Air Corps remained a
combatant arm of the Army, while the GHQAF came under the Chief of Staff in peacetime
and the commander of field forces in wartime. The two air components remained divided
until March 1, 1939, when the GHQAF came under the control of the Chief of Air Corps.
The MacArthur-Pratt agreement of 1931 made the Air Corps responsible for short-range
coastal defense and Army operations on land, but left the Navy as America’s offensive
force on the sea. Two developments changed this division of responsibility. First, advances
in aviation technology made restrictions to short-range operations nonsensical, as when
three B-17s intercepted the Italian liner Rex in the Atlantic over 700 miles from America’s
shores in 1937. Still, the Army continued buying, for the most part, short-range tactical
aircraft, including the twin- engine B-18, to support ground operations. Second, Adolf
Hitler’s successful use of air power as a threat in the Sudetenland-Czechoslovakia crisis
of 1938 convinced President Franklin Roosevelt that the United States needed a large
air force “with which to impress Germany,” and ordered the acquisition of 10,000 aircraft
(later reduced to 5,500 based on budget constraints) when Congress appropriated $300
million for the buildup.
When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Air Corps had 26,000 Airmen
and a heavy bomber force of only 23 B-17s. With the support of President Roosevelt,
Chief of Air Corps Arnold used British and French orders for 10,000 additional aircraft
to help launch a huge expansion of the aviation industry. With the fall of France in June
1940, Roosevelt ordered an Air Corps of 50,000 aircraft and 54 combat groups. Congress
appropriated $2 billion, eventually, to insure funding for both strategic and tactical air
forces. In March 1941 the Air Corps expanded to 84 groups. These actions and events
presaged what would become the largest air force in the world equipped with the most
modern aircraft available. By December 1941, however, the Army’s air corps still had
only 3,304 combat aircraft, but World War II mainstays such as P-51 Mustang and P-47
Thunderbolt fighters and the B-29 Superfortress bomber still were not operational. All
would become part of the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) led by Major General Hap
Arnold, established under Army Regulation 95-5 on June 20, 1941, with the Air Corps
and the Air Force Combat Command (formerly the GHQAF) as subordinate arms. This
merge creating the USAAF was significant because it represented the final hurdle in
organizational change prior to the creation of an independent Air Force in 1947.
In August 1941, at the behest of the War Department, USAAF Chief Arnold directed four
former faculty members of the Air Corps Tactical School to devise an air plan against
America’s potential adversaries. The plan was known as AWPD/1. This was significant
because it established independent operating objectives for the Air Corps and called for
30
precision bombing of the German industry and economy. Lieutenant Colonels Kenneth
Walker and Harold George and Majors Haywood Hansell and Laurence Kuter of the
newly-formed Air War Plans Division (AWPD) identified in their plan 154 “chokepoint”
targets in the German industrial fabric, the destruction of which, they held, would render
Germany “incapable of continuing to fight a war.” A lack of intelligence prevented the
design of a similar plan against Japan. The four planners calculated that the desired
air campaign would require 98 bomber groups-a force of over 6,800 aircraft. From their
recommendation General Arnold determined the number of supporting units, aircraft,
pilots, mechanics, and all other skills and equipment the USAAF would need to fight what
became World War II. The 239 groups estimated came close to the 243 combat groups
representing 80,000 aircraft and 2.4 million personnel that actually formed the USAAF
in 1944 at its wartime peak. The planners had also assumed that they would not have to
initiate their air plan with a complete 98-group force until April 1944. However, they were
not allowed the luxury of time. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor four months
after the air plan’s submission to the War Department, an ill-equipped USAAF found itself
thrust into the greatest war in human history.

Focus On:
THE BILLY MITCHELL COURT-MARTIAL
By John T. Correll . Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association.
In the Army’s view, the issue was insubordination, not the validity of Mitchell’s
claims.
By 1925, Billy Mitchell had alienated almost everybody in the War Department and Navy
Department, to say nothing of President Calvin Coolidge. Strident in his advocacy of
airpower, Mitchell did not hesitate to lash out when he disagreed with his superiors, which
was often. “The General Staff knows as much about the air as a hog does about skating,”
he said.
William Mitchell (no middle name) came to fame as the combat leader of American air
forces in France in World War I. He was promoted to the temporary grade of brigadier
general and kept his star after the war because of his assignment as assistant chief of
the Army Air Service.
When Mitchell’s bombers sank the surplus German battleship Ostfriesland in a July 1921
demonstration, it was a strong blow for airpower. It was also a huge embarrassment for
the Navy, which had said he couldn’t do it. Mitchell’s traditionalist boss, Army Chief Gen.
John J. Pershing, sided with the Navy in dismissing the significance of the demonstration.
Mitchell continued his all-out public campaign for airpower. He said the world stood on the
threshold of an “aeronautical era” and that military airpower, independent of ground and
sea forces, should be the first line of defense.
He was popular with the public and the press and had some supporters in Congress. He
had a strong following among younger officers, and even a few moles in the Navy. The
generals and admirals wanted to be rid of him.
Thus when his term as assistant air chief expired in March 1925, he was not reappointed.
He was assigned to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio as aviation officer for the Army’s
Eighth Corps Area, reverting to his permanent grade of colonel. It was an important job in
a significant command, but Mitchell felt he had been demoted and sent to the boondocks.
The Airmen in Texas still called him “General.”
Two Navy aircraft mishaps soon caused Mitchell’s temper to boil over in even more
spectacular fashion than usual. The worst of the accidents was the breakup of the Navy
dirigible Shenandoah over Ava, Ohio, Sept. 3. The airship was on a publicity junket,
due to pass over 27 cities at times announced in advance to please politicians and their
constituents. Over Ohio, Shenandoah ran into a line squall of intense thunderstorms but
did not divert around it, remaining on course for a state fair the next day.
32
Gripped by the storm, the airship pitched up to 6,300 feet, plunged to 3,200 feet, and
was thrown back up to 6,200 feet. The keel broke and the airship was torn into three
parts. The front section fell a mile to the ground, killing the skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Zachary
Lansdowne, and 13 other crew members. Part of the ship was able to maneuver as a free
balloon and landed, saving 27 lives.
The Shenandoah tragedy followed the news that a Navy PN-9 seaplane on a demonstration
flight to Hawaii had gone down in the Pacific because of engine failure. Another aircraft
on the flight was forced to land in the water 200 miles short of Hawaii when it ran out of
fuel.
Rocket From San Antonio

What enraged Mitchell as much as anything was the public reaction of Secretary of the
Navy Curtis D. Wilbur, who said the accidents illustrated limitations of airpower. “Some
people,” said Wilbur, “make extravagant claims for aviation. Great things have been
achieved. From our experience, however, I am convinced that the Atlantic and the Pacific
are still the greatest bulwarks against any air invasion of the United States.” Wilbur said
the PN-9 incident showed how difficult it was to cross 2,100 miles of ocean without
carrying bombs, much less to cross with 1,000-pound bombs.
In San Antonio Sept. 5, Mitchell called in the press and gave them a 5,000-word statement.
“These accidents are the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence, and almost
treasonable administration of the national defense by the Navy and War Departments,”
he said.
”All aviation policies, schemes, and systems are dictated by nonflying officers of the Army
or Navy who know practically nothing about it,” he said. “The lives of the Airmen are being
used merely as pawns in their hands. ... Officers and agents sent by the War and Navy
Departments to Congress have almost always given incomplete, misleading, or false
information about aeronautics.”
Mitchell said Shenandoah, overweight in its structure and with low reserve buoyancy, had
been sent on a propaganda mission without adequate safeguards. He then moved on to
general criticism of Army and Navy aviation programs.
He wasn’t finished.
Four days later, he called the reporters back and said, “If the department does not like
the statement I made, let them take disciplinary action as they see fit, according to their
judgment, court-martial or no court-martial. ... The investigation that is needed is of the
War and Navy Departments and their conduct in the disgraceful administration of aviation.”
Summoned to Washington to explain himself, Mitchell was greeted at the train station by
cheering supporters and an American Legion fife and drum corps.

Orders From Coolidge
President Coolidge was Mitchell’s direct opposite in personality. A dour man of few words,
he was satisfied to be known as “Silent Cal.” He made his national reputation by putting
down a police strike in Boston in 1919 when he was governor of Massachusetts.
The War Department inspector general recommended that Mitchell be tried by court-
martial. The charges were not made by Mitchell’s military superior but rather by the
Secretary of War at the direction of the President.
Coolidge did not accuse Mitchell directly in public. That might have been seen as
prejudicing the outcome of the trial. However, there was no doubt who Coolidge was
talking about when he spoke to the American Legion convention in early October.
“Any organization of men in the military service bent on inflaming the public mind for
the purpose of forcing government action through the pressure of public opinion is an
exceedingly dangerous undertaking and precedent,” Coolidge said. “It is for the civil
authority to determine what appropriations shall be granted, what appointments shall be
made, and what rules shall be adopted for the conduct of its armed forces. ... Whenever
the military power starts dictating to the civil authority by whatever means adopted, the
liberties of the country are beginning to end.”
Mitchell was charged under the 96th Article of War, the catch-all general article that
covered “disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline [and] all
conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the military service.” Mitchell ridiculed Article
96, saying, “Officers are tried under it for kicking a horse.”
The Army held Mitchell’s statements were prejudicial to good order and discipline,
insubordinate, “contemptuous and disrespectful,” and intended to discredit the War
Department and Navy Department. With the Sept. 5 and 9 statements counted separately,
it added up to eight specifications to the charge.
Coolidge, hoping to tamp down the controversy and divert attention from the Mitchell
court-martial, appointed a board, headed by New York banker Dwight W. Morrow, to look
into the military aviation issue.
Curtain Up
The court-martial began Oct. 28 in the Emery Building, an old red brick warehouse, at the
foot of Capitol Hill in downtown Washington. Five hundred people, including 40 reporters
and newsreel cameramen, lined the streets to see Colonel Mitchell and Mrs. Mitchell
arrive.
Twelve senior generals, handpicked by the Army and the War Department, were appointed
to the court. One of them, destined for greater things, was Mitchell’s boyhood friend from
Milwaukee, Douglas MacArthur. In addition, there was a “law member” of the court, Col.
Blanton C. Winship, a legal officer assigned to assist and rule on legal questions.
34
Mitchell promptly challenged three of the generals off the court, including Maj. Gen.
Charles P. Summerall, a future Army Chief of Staff who was to have been president of the
court. The ousted generals were not replaced, as only six members were required for a
trial. Maj. Gen. Robert L. Howze took over as president.
Mitchell’s defense team was led by Rep. Frank R. Reid (R-Ill.), a first rate lawyer who
met Mitchell at House Aircraft Committee hearings. He called members of the court “you
men” and “you people,” but the generals took it in stride. The prosecutor was the trial
judge advocate, Col. Sherman Moreland, fully competent but no match for Reid in flash
and dash.
Photos from the trial show members of the court with old-style high military collars. Mitchell
wore his collar folded down in the more modern fashion favored by Airmen, who claimed
that high collars chafed their necks while flying.
The prosecution introduced its evidence the morning of Nov. 2 and rested its case
that afternoon. Moreland called witnesses who established that Mitchell made the two
statements and gave them to the press. In the Army’s view, this was prima facie breach
of good order and discipline and sufficient for conviction.
It wasn’t nearly over, though. Next day, Reid announced that he wanted to call 73 witnesses
for the defense and asked for thousands of Army documents. He intended to argue the
validity of what Mitchell had said. Moreland objected. All that mattered was Mitchell had
made the statements. The substance of what he said counted only for mitigation and
extenuation, if that.
However, the court did not rule against the evidence Reid wanted to present. Under the
glare of public and press attention, Mitchell was given leeway that he would not have
gotten under other circumstances. Reid and Mitchell had effectively converted the court-
martial into a public debate about airpower. The trial would continue for six more weeks.
Gullion Evens the Odds

Reid introduced a parade of witnesses who gave evidence about equipment, training,
misleading military assessments to Congress, Army disregard of advice from air officers,
and endangerment of pilots from orders by nonflying superiors. He established that in the
past seven years, Mitchell had made 163 recommendations to improve the air service,
nearly all of them ignored or disapproved.
A surprise witness was Margaret Lansdowne, widow of the Shenandoah commander.
She testified the Navy tried to influence her statement to the board of inquiry, wanting her
to say that her husband had been willing and ready to make the flight. She told the inquiry
and the Mitchell court that her husband had regarded the flight as political and had flown
it under protest, believing the timing was dangerous because of the weather risk. She
produced a copy of a letter from Lansdowne to the Chief of Naval Operations asking for
a delay until thunderstorm season had passed.

Among those testifying for Mitchell were World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker and
Congressman Fiorello La Guardia. “Billy Mitchell is not being judged by his peers,” La
Guardia said. “He is being judged by nine dog robbers of the general staff.” Two little-
known majors, Henry H. “Hap” Arnold and Carl A. Spaatz, appeared for Mitchell as well.
Even the court was momentarily star struck when famed humorist Will Rogers, a friend of
Mitchell’s, attended a session of the trial.
Mitchell was the runaway favorite of the public, but the weeks of airpower testimony
made less of an impression on the members of the court, who understood better than the
civilians did the meaning of an Article 96 charge.
To shore up the prosecution, Maj. Allen W. Gullion was added as an assistant trial judge
advocate Nov. 17. A West Pointer and a former infantry officer, Gullion was regarded as
one of the best and most aggressive prosecutors in the Army. The attack on Mitchell and
the defense witnesses sharpened as Gullion took on a big share of the questioning.
The trial reached its dramatic peak in late November when Gullion cross-examined
Mitchell. He elicited acknowledgments from Mitchell that a considerable part of his
statements were opinion rather than fact and that he relied on the newspapers for some
of his information, especially about the Navy. Gullion tried to force Mitchell to admit that
he had accused officers of long and honorable standing of treason and criminal actions.
Mitchell said his words had been directed at a system rather than against an individual or
individuals, but Gullion had scored his point with the senior officers on the court.
The prosecution called a succession of rebuttal witnesses. Mitchell debunkers were not
difficult to find. As the trial ground on, the Morrow Board made its report, basically accepting
the arguments of the traditionalists over those of the Airmen. No radical changes were
necessary. The nation was safe from air attack. The Army and Navy air arms should stay
where they were.
Summing up for the prosecution on the last day of the court-martial, Gullion pulled out all
the stops.
“It is sufficient if the record shows that the conduct is to the prejudice and of a nature to
discredit,” he said. “The statements of Sept. 5 and 9 speak for themselves in that regard.
But can there be any doubt that the discipline of our Army will be ruined if the accused, in
the expressive vernacular of the doughboy, is allowed to get away with it? Every trooper
in Fort Huachuca, as he smokes his cigarette with his bunkie after mess, is talking about
this case. If the accused is not dismissed, the good trooper will be dismayed and the
malcontent and sorehead will be encouraged in his own insubordination.”
(A fascinating footnote to the story is that one of Gullion’s grandsons, Gen. Thomas S.
Moorman Jr., became vice chief of staff of the Air Force from 1994 to 1997.)
36
Mitchell Leaves the Army
After deliberating for three hours on the afternoon of Dec. 17, the court found Mitchell
guilty on the charge and all specifications. It suspended him from rank, command, and
duty, with the forfeiture of all pay and allowances for five years.
The votes were never revealed but Howze, the president of the court, said it was a split
decision. It was widely believed that MacArthur had voted to acquit, but according to most
historical sources, that was never confirmed. In his memoirs, MacArthur was cryptic on
the subject, saying, “I did what I could in his behalf.”
In November 1945, Sen. Alexander Wiley (R-Wis.)—who was trying to get Mitchell
promoted posthumously to major general—wrote to MacArthur, saying, “It was my
understanding that yours was the one vote against the court-martial’s verdict which
cashiered Billy Mitchell.” MacArthur replied, “Your recollection of my part in his trial is
entirely correct. It was fully known to him, and he never ceased to express his gratitude
for my attitude. ... He was a rare genius in his profession and contributed much to aviation
history.”
Coolidge approved the conviction Jan. 25, 1926, saying that Mitchell “employed
expressions which cannot be construed otherwise than as breathing defiance toward his
military superiors.”
However, Coolidge recognized that the sentence left Mitchell in an impossible situation.
It kept him in service, which prevented him from obtaining private employment, but took
away his pay, so he had no means of support. Coolidge reduced the punishment to
forfeiture of half of Mitchell’s monthly pay. The free-spending Mitchell could not get by
on half pay. The net effect was to force Mitchell to resign from the Army, which he did on
Feb. 1.
Pershing, now retired, observed, “There seems to be a Bolshevik bug in the air.” With
Mitchell gone, the Army cracked down on dissent. Arnold, an activist on Mitchell’s behalf,
was exiled to Fort Riley, Kan., a cavalry post, where he became commander of an
observation squadron.
Some Airmen concurred in Mitchell’s conviction. Benjamin D. Foulois, who had despised
Mitchell since their time in France in World War I, said, “A civilian could say things like that
but not an officer on active duty who had obligated himself by his commissioning oath to
an unswerving course of loyalty to his civilian and military superiors.”
In his memoirs, Arnold acknowledged as much. “No matter what was said about ‘Airpower
being on trial’—as it was, at times even in the eyes of the prosecution—the thing for which
Mitchell was really being tried he was guilty of, and except for Billy, everybody knew it,”
Arnold said. “We all knew there was no other way—in accordance with the Army code,
Billy had it coming.”

Reconsiderations
Mitchell continued to speak, write, and advocate for airpower. He died in 1936, but as his
disciples, including Arnold and Spaatz, moved into positions of authority, he was openly
acknowledged as an Air Force hero.
When the Air Force Association was formed in 1946, Mitchell became AFA’s hero, too.
And when the Air Force gained its independence from the Army in 1947, the cover of the
association’s journal, Air Force Magazine, proclaimed it “The Day Billy Mitchell Dreamed
Of.”
Mitchell was celebrated in 1955 in a Warner Brothers movie, “The Court-Martial of Billy
Mitchell,” which was longer on enthusiasm than on historical accuracy. Only Hollywood
would have chosen Gary Cooper, an actor noted for not talking much, to play Mitchell.
Rod Steiger was cast as Gullion.
In 1956, William Mitchell Jr., with AFA acting as his agent, petitioned the Air Force Board
for Correction of Military Records to overturn the verdict of the court-martial. The board
heard the case in 1957, but the results were not disclosed until the final review in 1958.
By a vote of four-to-one, the board recommended the findings and sentence of the court-
martial be declared null and void. “The conclusion is inescapable in the board’s opinion
that Mitchell was tried for his views rather than a violation of Article 96,” the proceedings
report said.
Secretary of the Air Force James H. Douglas Jr. could not agree. He recognized that
many of Mitchell’s beliefs had been vindicated by history but that “while on active duty and
subject to the discipline of military service, he characterized the administration of the War
and Navy Departments as incompetent, criminally negligent, and almost treasonable.”
Mitchell’s statements in September 1925 substantiated the charges against him.
“Subsequent confirmation of the correctness of certain views he expressed cannot affect
the propriety or impropriety under the 96th Article of expressions which he employed.”
The verdict stood.
The Mitchell issue was supposedly settled, but popped up again in a different form in
2004. The Fiscal 2005 Defense Authorization bill authorized the promotion of Billy Mitchell
to major general, effective as of the date of his death in 1936. Neither the Pentagon nor
the White House took any action as a result of the authorization, and the matter is again
at rest—at least, so far.
38
WORLD WAR II - GLOBAL CONFLICT
Despite the heroics of such Airmen as Lieutenant George Welch, who was credited
with having downed 4 enemy aircraft, the surprise strike on Pearl Harbor showed the
limitations of the USAAF’s preparations for war. The Hawaiian Air Force lost 66 percent
of its strength on December 7, 1941, while the Japanese lost only 29 pilots. Across
the International Dateline, Lieutenant Joseph Moore claimed 2 Japanese aircraft in the
skies over Clark Field in the Philippines, but General Douglas MacArthur’s air force of
277 aircraft, including 2 squadrons of B-17s (35 aircraft in all), was destroyed. These
greatest concentrations of American air power at the time had failed to deter or hinder the
Japanese.
At the start of World War I a solid industrial infrastructure on which to construct the world’s
greatest air force had not existed in the United States. At the start of World War II this
was not the case. The aircraft manufacturing sector was large and growing daily. Before
the war, General Arnold had established nine civilian primary flight training schools, two
Air Corps basic flight training schools, and two Air Corps advanced flight training schools.
The number of trained pilots had jumped from 300 in 1938 to 30,000 in 1941 (plus 110,000
mechanics). On December 7, 1941, the USAAF had a running start and was in the war
for the duration.
Arnold planned first for vastly expanded production, training, and research, with the long-
term military interests of the nation in mind. While German factories maintained a one-
shift peacetime work week until 1943, American plants ran around the clock. Swelled by
hundreds of thousands of women, more than two million American workers built nearly
160,000 aircraft of all kinds for the Army and 140,000 for the Navy and Allied nations
during the war. America’s aircraft production overwhelmed that of every other nation in
the world. Altogether, its factories turned out 324,750 aircraft for the war effort; Germany’s
factories turned out 111,077 and Japan’s 79,123. Where other nations stopped production
lines to make modifications, or manufactured models long obsolescent, the United States,
left its factories alone to insure high production levels and established separate depots
to modify and modernize older models. Until the German ME 262 jet, American aircraft
set the standard for performance and combat success with their ruggedness (the B-17
Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, and P-47 Thunderbolt); their range and bomb load (the
B-29 Superfortress); their range, speed, and agility (the P-51 Mustang); and their utility
(the C-47 Skytrain). Eventually, they were to equip 243 groups, consuming about 35
percent of America’s total investment in equipment and munitions for the war. They were
supported and flown by two and a half million men and women, nearly a third of the U.S.
Army’s total strength.
As important as production to Arnold was training. The demands of flight required the best
from the brightest. Voluntary enlistments swelled the USAAF initially, supplemented by a
pool of deferred flyers previously enrolled in the Air Corps Enlisted Reserve. Flying Training
Command prepared nearly 200,000 pilots, nearly 100,000 navigators and bombardiers,
and many hundreds of thousands of gunners and other specialists. American pilots

received more uninterrupted training than those of any other nation, again because of
Arnold’s strategic vision and America’s bountiful resources. Primary, basic, and advanced
training were for individual flyers, brought together at operational training units under the
First, Second, Third, and Fourth Air Forces and I Troop Carrier Command for forming
into new units. Technical Training Command prepared over two million others, mostly
mechanics and specialists to keep aircraft airworthy. Arnold and others labored to insure
that the equipment these legions employed was the most advanced available. Research
centers and test facilities sprang up all over the United States, dedicated to stretching
aviation performance to the limit—and beyond. High octane aviation gasolines, radars,
jets, rockets, radios, and special bombs were all products of the USAAF’s commitment to
basic and applied research and development.
This enormous aerial force was wielded by General Arnold, who assumed control over all
USAAF units, with the War Department reorganization of March 1942. He quickly agreed
with General George Marshall to postpone any discussion of an independent air force
until after the war. However, Arnold was a member of both the American Joint Chiefs of
Staff (JCS) and the joint American and British Combined Chiefs of Staff. The March 1942
reorganization and Arnold’s position on the Combined Chiefs of Staff, nevertheless, gave
the USAAF a large measure of autonomy, which was subsequently enhanced with the
formation of the Twentieth Air Force (responsible for the B-29 campaign against Japan
and under Arnold’s direct command). A tireless commander, Arnold sacrificed his health
building a winning air force.
Before the United States entered the war, American and British officials met from January
to March 1941 for the ABC-1 talks and agreed on a strategy for defeating the Axis nations.
They decided that because Germany represented the stronger enemy, British forces in
the Mediterranean would hold their positions. In the Pacific, American forces would go
on the strategic defensive, while Allied armies in Europe built up for an eventual landing
on the continent followed by a victorious march to Berlin. After December 1941, however,
events worked to modify this strategy. First, the U.S. Navy successfully bid for higher
priority in the Pacific in an early two-pronged assault on Japan, one from Australia and
New Guinea through the Philippines, the other through the islands of the South and
Central Pacific. Second, in Europe, British demands for action in the Mediterranean and
the immediate need for a reduction of German pressure on the Soviet Union diverted
British and American forces to fight in North Africa. These developments left only the
England-based Allied air forces to attack the German home land through a strategic
bombing campaign.
On June 12, 1942, the USAAF inaugurated operations in the Mediterranean, striking
against the Ploesti, Romania, oil fields, a target American airmen would come to know
well. Large-scale action began with Operation TORCH—the invasion of North Africa—six
months later on November 8. American doctrinal and organizational problems allowed
the German Luftwaffe to achieve early domination in the air. Allied ground commanders in
North Africa demanded that air units maintain continuous air cover over Army formations.
Their firepower thus diluted, “penny packets” patrolled the skies constantly, rarely finding
the enemy, and were therefore not available in sufficient numbers when the Luftwaffe
40
made concentrated attacks. German pilots achieved a three-to-one advantage in aerial
victories. At the Casablanca Conference, in late January 1943, the United States adopted
a tactical doctrine formulated by British commanders Arthur Coningham and Bernard
Montgomery after bloody fighting against Germany’s Afrika Korps. This employment of
airpower in tactical situations would turn out to be the most valuable lesson learned from
the USAAF in the North Africa campaign. Air superiority became their first objective for
the air arm, including deep sweeps against enemy airfields, followed by interdiction to
isolate battlefields, and then close air support to assist ground units in their movements
against the enemy. Air and ground commanders would work together, neither auxiliary to
the other. This experience highlighted the need for a single commander of all theatre air
forces.
Codified as Field Manual 31-35, this new doctrine of tactical warfare served the USAAF
well. With their air forces finally organized into an independent Northwestern African Air
Forces under General Carl Spaatz, including a Strategic Air Force under General Jimmy
Doolittle and a Tactical Air Force under Coningham, the Allies achieved air superiority
in the spring of 1943 and cut the flow of supplies and reinforcements to Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel’s army in North Africa. Allied commanders had the assistance of ULTRA
intercepts, the top secret code-breaking operation, that provided detailed information
about German ship and aircraft schedules. Axis armies in Tunisia, numbering 270,000
men, surrendered in May.
These initial steps toward organizing air power as an independent, unified force also
led Army Chief of Staff George Marshall to issue Field Manual 100-20 in 1943. This
document, the USAAF’s “declaration of independence,” recognized “land power and air
power” to be “coequal and interdependent forces.” In the Mediterranean, the Twelfth
Air Force neutralized the Luftwaffe when Allied forces invaded Sicily in July and the
Italian peninsula in September. Tough fighting slowed Lieutenant General Mark Clark’s
forces as they pushed northward, forcing him to rely increasingly on USAAF assistance
to break through German lines. After an initial bombing campaign failed to break the
stalemate on the ground, USAAF units focused their attention on interdiction. Operation
STRANGLE hoped to cut the flow of supplies to German defenders in Italy. The Twelfth
Air Force learned how difficult that could be. Downing bridges, strafing trains and trucks,
and bombing supply dumps contributed to eventual victory in 1945, but the protection of
darkness gave the enemy opportunities to supply its forces.
AWPD/1 had called for a strategic bombing campaign against the sources of Germany’s
power as the most efficient and effective means of achieving victory. With the United
States on the defensive in the Pacific and Allied units bogged down in North Africa, the
Eighth Air Force in England joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the largest strategic
bombing campaign ever attempted. Progress was slow through 1943. Airfields had to be
built, crews trained, aircraft modified. Circumstances diverted Eighth Air Force units to
pressing needs elsewhere in the world. The first official bombing mission did not come
until August 17, 1942, when twelve B-17s of the 97th Bomb Group, accompanied by
Eighth Air Force commander Ira Eaker, attacked a marshalling yard in France. The Eighth

Air Force, along with the RAF and the Italy-based Fifteenth Air Force (beginning in late
1943), would be the only Allied forces attacking targets inside Germany’s borders until
late 1944.
Missions through the summer of 1943 were trial and error, as the Eighth Air Force slowly
pushed deeper into German-occupied territory. Prewar doctrine dictated that unescorted
self-defending bombers could fight their way through air defenses to destroy targets in an
enemy’s heartland. Attacking in small numbers (AWPD/1 had called for a force of 6,834
bombers), the USAAF was severely tested by poor weather, bombing inaccuracy, lack of
bombers, and stiff enemy defenses as it attempted to get at Germany’s industrial web.
While the Eighth Air Force labored to overcome these challenges, the Air Staff, the AWPD,
and the Committee of Operations Analysts worked to identify for destruction chokepoints
in the German war economy. Although RAF Bomber Command’s Arthur Harris wanted
the USAAF to join him in a night campaign of area bombing to destroy Germany’s cities,
the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the Casablanca Conference gave its support for daylight
precision strategic bombing. AWPD/I had identified 154 targets. A new plan, AWPD/42
found 177. In late April 1943 at the Trident Conference, the Combined Chiefs approved a
list of 76 targets as Eighth Air Force objectives. The Eighth Air Force, with the RAF,was
to win air superiority, an “intermediate objective second to none in priority,” and weaken
Germany enough to allow an invasion. Its undertaking was to be known as Operation
POINTBLANK, the Combined Bomber Offensive.
The pace of operations intensified for the 17 groups General Eaker had available in July
1943. Brigadier General Laurence Kuter and Colonel Curtis LeMay worked out combat
formations at the wing and group levels to maximize the number of defensive machine
guns to be brought to bear against attacking fighters. Day after day, weather permitting,
the Eighth Air Force struck at German airfields, aircraft depots, and aircraft industry,
hoping to win air superiority by bombing the Luftwaffe on the ground; in late July alone
it lost 10 percent of its attacking bombers, In August it struck at ball bearing factories in
Schweinfurt and the Messerschmitt aircraft factory at Regensburg while the Twelfth Air
Force hit oil refineries in Ploesti, Romania, and aircraft factories in Wiener Neustadt.
Eighth Air Force P-47 Thunderbolt fighters were soon outfitted with drop tanks, which
extended their range and were intended to reduce losses as they escorted the bombers,
but the Luftwaffe simply withheld attacking until they ran short of fuel and had to return
to England.
The second week of October 1943 marked the low point in the Eighth Air Force’s initial
campaign. Scoring some bombing successes, General Eaker’s command lost 8 percent
of its bombers over Bremen, 8 percent over Anklam-Marienburg, 13 percent over Munster,
and 26 percent in a return trip to Schweinfurt. The loss of over 1,000 crewmen and nearly
150 bombers forced a change in American strategy. First, Arnold ordered all long-range
P-38 Lightning and P-51 Mustang groups completing training in the United States to
England to provide escort for the bombers for the duration of the war. Second, he created
a new strategic air force in Italy, the Fifteenth, to attack Germany from the south. Third, he
revised the command structure of the strategic bombing effort, moving General Spaatz to
42
England as head of United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe (USSTAF) to command
the bombing campaign against Germany, assisted by Fred Anderson and Jimmy Doolittle
as operational commanders and William Kepner as fighter commander. Eaker went to
command the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, including the Fifteenth and Twelfth Air
Forces.
Change came quickly. Kepner revised fighter tactics to include phased and relay escort
to extend the range of the fighters accompanying the bombers deep into Germany,
especially when P-51 groups began arriving in December 1943. Doolittle ordered Kepner
to unleash his fighters, assigned not just to escort bombers, but to go out, find, and
destroy Luftwaffe aircraft. Kepner told his pilots to strafe German fighters on the ground
if necessary. On February 20, 1944, Spaatz and Anderson began an all-out bombing
offensive against German aircraft production. Five days of bombing, nineteen thousand
tons worth, impaired some production; but the key to week’s effectiveness was the
Luftwaffe’s loss of one-third of its strength through aerial combat, and the Eighth and
Fifteenth Air Forces growth in theirs.
To keep up the pressure, Spaatz and Anderson resolved to bomb industrial targets in
Berlin, under the assumption that the Luftwaffe would make an all-out effort to defend
its capital. Their assumption was correct. Two days of the heaviest fighting yet seen in
the skies over Germany so depleted the defender’s forces that on the third day, March
9, 1944, the Luftwaffe failed to rise and give battle. Anderson relished reports that Berlin
radio was “squealing like a stuck pig.” The Luftwaffe grew weaker and the USAAF grew
stronger as new groups, both fighter and bomber, arrived from the United States. A flood
of men and materiel bespoke Arnold’s 1941 commitment to prepare for a long war. Further
attrition of the German defenders would be necessary in future months, but air superiority
was now firmly in American hands.
To Arnold and Spaatz, this hard-won victory finally opened German industries to destruction
from the air. Two conditions affected the strategic bombing effort and delayed the final
bombing campaign. The pending V-weapon assault by Germany on England forced a
massive preemptive Allied bombing campaign against it, diverting 6,100 sorties from
POINTBLANK strategic targets. The cross-channel invasion, scheduled by the Allies for
late spring, diverted Eighth Air Force bombers against transportation targets in France to
isolate the invasion area. In support of the invasion, Spaatz wanted to go after German oil
targets to ground the Luftwaffe and force the German army to park its vehicles. Invasion
commander General Dwight Eisenhower overruled him on March 25, assigning USSTAF
to interdict the landing area. VIII Fighter Command under Kepner continued to strafe
German airfields and other ground targets through June.
When eight Allied divisions landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, they did so under
conditions of near total Allied control of the air, courtesy of USSTAF---only two Luftwaffe
fighters appeared in the area that day. In late July USSTAF bombers again proved
critical to the ground campaign as they blasted a hole through German lines at St. Lo for
Lieutenant General George Patton’s Third Army. Allied tactical air forces, which included
Major General Elwood Quesada’s IX Tactical Air Command for the First Army and Major

General Otto Weyland’s XIX Tactical Air Command for the Third Army, provided protective
cover and close air support, in line with procedures established in North Africa, for Allied
armies sweeping across France toward Germany. At Argentan-Falaise in August air
power plugged the gap between encircling American and Canadian armies, destroying
hundreds of German armored vehicles and aiding in the capture of fifty thousand German
troops. During the Battle of the Bulge in December, airlift, aerial interdiction, and close air
support helped turn a near-disaster into an Allied victory.
Eighth and Fifteenth Air Force attacks on Germany’s fuel industry provided immeasurable
help to the ground offensives, restricting severely the ability of German ground forces
to maneuver their armored and mechanized units. Allied air superiority, a product of
the Eighth Air Force’s aerial campaign, had permitted the landings in Europe, the Allied
armies freedom of maneuver, and resupply without concern for the Luftwaffe. Germany
had shown the world in 1939 and 1940 what close coordination between tactical air power
and ground armies could accomplish. The USAAF repaid the favor with a vengeance in
the drive from Normandy into Germany in 1944 and early 1945.
Eisenhower held first call on Spaatz’s strategic bombing force through the summer of
1944, but allowed it to return to POINTBLANK objectives with an assault on Germany’s
oil production when it was not bombing targets in France in support of ground units.
ULTRA intercepts confirmed that the USAAF had finally found a true chokepoint in the
German industrial economy. German armaments minister Albert Speer predicted that
continued attacks on it would have “tragic consequences.” Despite heroic efforts to restore
production, Germany found its tanks and aircraft immobilized because of growing fuel
shortages. The entrance of the ME 262 jet fighter into combat inflicted occasional heavy
losses on USSTAF, including thirty-three of the 445th Bombardment Group’s thirty-seven
bombers on September 27, 1944, but it could not change the war’s outcome.
Adding Germany’s railroad network to its priority target list in the autumn of 1944, USSTAF
brought Germany’s economy to the point of collapse by February 1945. Responding to
temporary German successes during the Battle of the Bulge, Soviet requests, and a desire
to hasten the enemy’s surrender, USSTAF joined with the RAF in area-bombing Berlin,
Dresden, and other German cities in February. Assigned targets remained industrial
and transportation chokepoints in keeping with precision strategic bombing doctrine, but
clouds and other factors made these missions, in effect, terror bombings. Spaatz declared
an end to the strategic bombing campaign on April 16, 1945.
American Airmen had decided that they could defeat the enemy most efficiently by
destroying its industrial web through precision strategic bombing. In so doing they hoped
to prevent a repeat of World War I’s trench warfare. Ironically, the contest they found in the
skies over Europe from 1942 to 1945 was in many ways just as bloody as the earlier war’s
contest on the ground. Medal of Honor recipient Lieutenant William Lawley of the 305th
Bombardment Group flew a B-17 back from Heiterblick, over 550 miles, with a face full of
broken glass and shrapnel, a dead copilot draped over the controls, wounded crewmen,
and only one engine running. The numbers associated with the USAAF’s tactical and
44
strategic campaigns against Germany reveal the ferocity of the air war: 1.6 million tons
of bombs dropped on Europe, 765,000 bomber sorties, 929,000 fighter sorties, 31,914
airmen dead (by combat and accident), and 27,694 aircraft lost (by combat and accident).
In the waning days of the war against Germany, Arnold ordered an independent team
to evaluate air power’s accomplishments and failures. Their product, called the United
States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) and supported by 216 volumes of analysis
and documentation on the European war (another 109 covered the war against Japan),
concluded “that even a first-class military power—rugged and resilient as Germany
was—cannot live long under full-scale and free exploitation of air weapons over the heart
of its territory.” The USSBS admitted that a slow buildup of aerial forces and inaccurate
bombing had kept air power from reaching its potential, but judged as “decisive” the
diversion of Germany’s capabilities from the supporting of armies to the defending of its
own skies, the attrition of enemy air forces, and the destruction of enemy oil supplies and
transportation networks. The strategic bombing campaign forced Germany to divert 40
percent of its industry to aerial defense, 2 million of its workers to manufacturing supplies
and equipment for air defense, 2 million of its soldiers to manning ground defenses, and
2.5 million of its laborers to cleaning up the damage. Victory in the air was “complete,”
and air power had helped “turn the tide overwhelmingly in favor of Allied ground forces.”
Despite Europe’s priority in Allied planning, America’s first strategic bombing effort of the
war began against Japan, when sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle and launched from the USS Hornet attacked targets
on the Japanese home island of Honshu in mid-April 1942. Although militarily insignificant,
the Doolittle raid embarrassed and infuriated Japanese military leaders and raised Allied
morale. It was an omen of what Japan could expect from America’s air power.
All the while, the Pacific war was more than just half-a-world away. In Europe the United
States had powerful allies to consult and support at every turn. Except for the British
Empire’s forces in India, Burma, and Australia, the war against Japan was an American
show. Europe had Eisenhower to unite British and American armies, navies, and air forces.
In the Pacific, the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy competed in the drive toward the Japanese
homeland. In General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area, the U.S. Army fought
from Australia through New Guinea to Leyte and Luzon in the Philippines. In Admiral
Chester Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean Areas, the U.S. Navy moved among the islands from the
Solomons and Gilberts through the Marshalls, Carolines, and Marianas to Iwo Jima and
Okinawa. Combined with a lesser American effort to support China’s war against Japan,
the distances involved insured a major role for the USAAF.
In the Army’s initial fighting on Papua New Guinea, thick jungles, rugged terrain, and
inadequate forces restricted the help the USAAF could provide for MacArthur’s hard-
pressed command. By December 1942 the Fifth Air Force under Major General George
Kenney had sufficient numbers of P-38s to seize air superiority over the island, allowing
its B-17, B-24, B-25, and A-20 bombers to cut the flow of Japanese reinforcements and
supplies. Kenney proved the master tactical innovator, developing skip bombing to sink
enemy ships and arming his medium bombers with extra nose-mounted machine guns
and even 75-mm cannon to improve their firepower. Kenney took a “seamless” approach

to air power that had, in Carl Spaatz’s words, “no line of cleavage between strategic and
tactical air forces.” One day his heavy bombers would attack enemy troop formations
hundreds of feet from American lines; the next, they pursued enemy shipping hundreds
of miles behind enemy lines.
General MacArthur adopted an island-hopping strategy, skipping over large enemy forces
in the American drive northward, and, because of the Fifth Air Force’s command of the
air, leaving isolated Japanese garrisons to starve, cut off from resupply and rescue. The
range of General Kenney’s aircraft determined the distance to the next objective. By
October 1944 MacArthur’s army was ready to leap from New Guinea to Leyte in the
Philippines, a target beyond the range of land-based air power. Admiral William Halsey’s
carriers provided air cover until Kenney’s Far East Air Forces (FEAF), which combined
the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces, could move to the Philippines. There, FEAF became
engaged in the Army’s longest Pacific land campaign, which continued until the end of
the war.
The USAAF also became involved in the effort to keep Chiang Kai-shek‘s China in the
war, tying down dozens of Japanese divisions. Initially this involved Claire Chennault’s
small force of private American pilots in China’s pay, the Flying Tigers, who captured
headlines in the United States when victories of any kind were few in number. With their
occupation of Siam and Burma by mid-1942 the Japanese had isolated China, blockading
it by sea and cutting supply roads. The USAAF had little choice but to launch a resupply
effort into China over the “Hump”—the Himalaya Mountains—from India. The route took
American crews above some of the most dangerous terrain in the world in overloaded
C-46 and (C-47 transports not designed for the weather and high altitudes the missions
required. By war’s end Hump pilots had ferried 1.18 million tons of supplies from India into
China for the fight against Japan.
Although America’s original Pacific strategy sought to choke the enemy through a naval
blockade, after three years of war Japan remained unwilling to surrender. For Hap Arnold,
a strategic bombing campaign employing B-29s would force it to capitulate, obviate the
need for an Allied land invasion, and present an opportunity to prove the war-winning
potential of an independent air force. The JCS had approved Arnold, as their executive
agent, to command the Superfortresses of the Twentieth Air Force. They could strike from
fifteen hundred miles, but even their great range left few options for bases from which to
launch the air assault. Nimitz’s drive through the Marianas in the summer of 1944 freed
Tinian, Guam, and Saipan to base the B-29s of Brigadier General Haywood Hansell’s XXI
Bomber Command, the combat arm of the Washington-based Twentieth Air Force. Iwo
Jima, conquered after heavy fighting in February 1945, provided an emergency landing
field for damaged B-29s and a base for P-51 fighter escorts. After a largely futile strategic
bombing effort from India and China in 1944, XX Bomber Command joined Hansell’s
growing force in the Marianas early in 1945 for the final strikes against Japan.
46
Hansell, an author of AWPD/1, stayed true to high-altitude daylight precision strategic
bombing doctrine, beginning with XXI Bomber Command’s first mission against the
Japanese home islands on November 24, 1944. His assignment was to “achieve the
earliest possible progressive dislocation of the Japanese military, industrial, and economic
systems and to undermine the morale of the Japanese people to a point where their
capacity and will to wage war was decisively weakened.” He faced technical problems
(including B-29 engines that tended to burst into flames), unanticipated 200 mile-per-hour
winds of the jet stream over the home islands, and bad weather when striking mainly at
Japan’s aviation industries. At high altitude bombing accuracy was minimal; only 10
percent of bombs dropped fell within 1,000 feet of a target. Twenty-two missions disabled
only one factory.
Arnold replaced Hansell with Major General Curtis LeMay in January 1945, with orders
to achieve immediate results. During January and February 1945, LeMay’s results were
no better than Hansell’s. He then surmised that Japanese industry was too dispersed and
bombing accuracy too poor for a precision campaign
from high altitude in daylight. Recognizing that
Japanese air defenses were far weaker than those
he had encountered in Germany, but still taking
a great gamble to produce immediate results, he
ordered his crews to remove their defensive guns
and fly low (at seven thousand feet) by night to carry
heavier bomb loads, and burn down Japan’s cities
with incendiaries. The initial raid against Tokyo
on March 10, 1945, burned 15.8 square miles of
urban area, killed almost 85,000,wounded almost
45,000, made almost 1 million homeless, and
became the most deadly air attack in history. By
August LeMay’s command had burned 150 square
miles in 68 Japanese cities—few of significant size
remained undamaged. Faced with an implacable
enemy unwilling to surrender and the prospect of a
costly invasion, but equipped with a new weapon of
tremendous destructive capability, President Harry
Truman ordered the first atomic bomb dropped on
Commanding General, U.S. Army Air Forces,
Hiroshima on August 6 and a second on Nagasaki Henry “Hap” Arnold. Under his leadership
three days later. Japan surrendered on August 14 and fresh from victory in World War II, the
after strategic bombing had levelled all of its major USAAF was well-positioned for separation
from and equality with the Army as a fully
cities and killed or injured 800,000 of its people. independent service.
The Pacific war cost the United States over 13,000

aircraft. Most were lost in transit, to battle damage, and through general wear-out. At war’s
end, the USAAF claimed 9,100 Japanese aircraft destroyed in combat. America’s top
ranking ace of all time, Medal of Honor recipient Major Richard Bong, became one of the
war’s last statistics when he crashed in California, test-flying a jet. The Allies used 502,781

tons of bombs against Japan, 160,800 of which were dropped on the home islands. The
B-29 mining campaign and the naval blockade had destroyed Japan’s economy, but only
a strategic bombing campaign convinced its leaders to surrender.
From 1939 to 1945 the USAAF’s personnel strength grew from 24,000 to 2,253,000;
its aircraft inventory from 2,400 to 63,715. It dropped 2.05 million tons of bombs in
World War II, flying and fighting over every ocean and six continents. Strategic bombing
and air power did not live up to doctrinal expectations and win the war independently,
but the USAAF forced enemy nations to divert enormous resources and effort toward
defending their skies against it. If the USAAF did not make the Army and Navy obsolete,
it insured that they rarely had to face the full force of enemy counterparts. Generals
learned that air superiority and close air support were essential to the success of any
ground campaign and that battlefield air interdiction was perhaps the most difficult of air
power functions. North African operations proved that air power worked best when its
forces were concentrated and directed as an independent or at least autonomous arm
to achieve wartime objectives—coequal to the ground forces, auxiliary to neither. Finally,
and to Arnold perhaps most important, the USAAF learned that air power meant planning,
organization, training, and harnessing technology and science to produce new ordnance,
radar, jets, rockets, and a variety of advanced aircraft that ensured success in combat.
48
Focus On:
DAYLIGHT PRECISION BOMBING
By John T. Correll . Reprinted by permission from Air Force

A basic belief of the Army Air Forces was severely tested in the skies over Germany
and Japan.
In the aviation enthusiasm of the 1930s, it was popular to claim that Air Corps bombardiers
could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from high altitude. In 1940, Theodore H. Barth,
president of Carl L. Norden Inc., said that “we do not regard a 15-foot square ... as being
a very difficult target to hit from an altitude of 30,000 feet,” provided the bombardier was
using that company’s new M-4 bombsight connected to an autopilot. That was stretching it
considerably. In everyday practice in 1940, the average score for an Air Corps bombardier
was a circular error of 400 feet, and that was from the relatively forgiving altitude of 15,000
feet instead of 30,000. Nobody knows for sure where the “pickle barrel” imagery began.
The term may have been coined by Norden’s Barth, who was among its most energetic
popularizers. Norden was not alone in spreading the legend. Some Air Force bombardiers
spoke proudly of tossing bombs into a 100-foot circle from four miles up. The pickle barrel
story, often told and widely believed, served to reinforce the theory of daylight precision
bombing, developed in the 1930s at the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Ala.
The theory rejected the previously prevailing strategy of bombing broad areas, more or
less indiscriminately, and focused on specific targets of military significance. As a side
benefit, precision bombing would avoid civilian casualties and limit collateral damage.
The Army Air Forces was the lone champion of daylight precision bombing. The Navy—
for whom the Norden bombsight was originally developed—gave up on it in favor of
dive bombing. The British, finding that they could not hit precision targets, relied on area
bombing at night. Daylight precision bombing was conducted by various kinds of aircraft
in World War II, but the real test of it was the long-range strategic bombing missions in
Europe and Asia of AAF B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s. The first experimental bombsights
appeared in 1910, but early bombing techniques were rudimentary. Bombing in World
War I was at times spectacular—as when Zeppelin airships and Gotha biplanes dropped
bombs on London—but it was of little strategic importance. A US Air Service pamphlet in
1918 spoke of bombs hitting “in the vicinity” of the target. Precision bombing did not come
into its own until the 1930s, with the availability of high-quality bombsights from Norden
and Sperry and the introduction of faster, longer-ranging bombers. The best Air Corps
bombardiers achieved considerable success in good weather and against clearly marked
targets, which were typically huge bull’s-eye circles painted on the ground. Strategic
bombardment was not yet an Air Corps mission. Development of long-range bombers
had to be justified on the basis of coastal defense. However, the Tactical School theorists
did not bother with such pretense. They saw strategic bombardment as the future of

warfare. The special mission of the air arm, they said, was to attack the “enemy national
structure,” especially the “industrial web,” which was vulnerable to the air arm but not to
either of the other arms.
Committed to Precision
Daylight precision bombing became Air Force doctrine, inseparable from the push to
obtain four-engine B-17 bombers in appreciable numbers. In 1940, Maj. Gen. Henry H.
“Hap” Arnold, Chief of the Air Corps, declared, “The Air Corps is committed to a strategy of
high-altitude precision bombing of military objectives.” The Air Corps regarded the bomber
as its principal weapon. Furthermore—on the basis of very thin evidence—the Air Corps
concluded that new bombers such as the B-17 and the B-24 flew too high and too fast for
pursuit aircraft to catch them and that bombers could operate over enemy territory without
fighter escort. In 1941, the AAF plan to implement Rainbow 5, the basic Army-Navy war
plan, was drafted by four officers who had been daylight precision ringleaders at the
Tactical School: Lt. Col. Harold L. George, Lt. Col. Kenneth N. Walker, Maj. Haywood S.
Hansell Jr., and Maj. Laurence S. Kuter. Air War Plans Division Plan No. 1 (AWPD-1) was
straight out of the Maxwell playbook. It prescribed an emphasis on precision bombing
against the German national infrastructure, industry—especially the aircraft industry—and
the Luftwaffe. The planners were not misled by pickle barrel assumptions. According to
data from training and practice bombing, a heavy bomber at 20,000 feet had a 1.2 percent
probability of hitting a 100-foot-square target. About 220 bombers would be required for
90 percent probability of destroying the target. AWPD-1 forecast a need for 251 combat
groups to carry out the plan. Bombing was a complicated proposition. Where the bomb
hit was a function of the direction and speed of the airplane at the moment of release, the
aerodynamics of the projectile, and the wind and atmospheric conditions while the bomb
was in flight.
The bombardier looked through the telescope of the bombsight to find the target
somewhere ahead, then made adjustments to compensate for the effects of wind drift
and the speed of the airplane. He then fixed the target in the crosshairs, and flew the
airplane to the automatically calculated release point by the link from his bombsight to the
autopilot.
Historian Stephen L. McFarland has explained the geometry of it, using the example of
a B-17 flying at 160 mph at 23,000 feet and dropping a 600-pound bomb. The bomb was
released at a distance, measured on the ground, of 8,875 feet from the target. It was in
flight for 38 seconds. If the speed calculated for the airplane was off by two mph and the
altitude wrong by 25 feet, that made a difference of 115 feet in where the bomb would land.
The limited yield of the bombs added to the problem. A 500-pound bomb, standard for
precision missions after 1943, had a lethal radius of only 60 to 90 feet. It dug a crater just
two feet deep and nine feet wide. With bombing accuracy measured in hundreds of feet,
it took a great many bombs to get the job done. Such high ratios of ordnance expended to
results achieved were not unusual in war, nor were they unique to AAF bombers in World
War II. The Army fired 10,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition for each enemy soldier
wounded and 50,000 rounds for each enemy killed. It took the Germans an average of
50
16,000 88 mm flak shells to bring down a single Allied heavy bomber. Daylight precision
bombing got off to a rocky start. When Eighth Air Force was set up in England in 1942, its
methods were at odds with those of the Royal Air Force. Air Chief Marshal Arthur T. Harris,
chief of Bomber Command, was the foremost advocate of “city busting,” the night area
bombing campaign that targeted the German population centers and workforce. He was
supported in this by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and a national policy of “dehousing”
the Germans. Churchill wanted the Americans to join the British bombing program rather
than instigate a different one of their own. He was prepared to put pressure on President
Roosevelt to order the AAF to change its strategy but was talked out of it at the Casablanca
Conference in January 1943 by Maj. Gen. Ira C. Eaker, commander of Eighth Air Force.
Eaker’s key point was the value of keeping the Germans under attack both day and
night. Eaker had other problems as well. He could not mount large bomber operations
because his aircraft and aircrews were diverted to operations in North Africa and the
creation of Fifteenth Air Force in Italy in 1943. More than half of his remaining resources
were assigned to attacking German submarine pens—a high priority for the British—even
though bombing had little effect on these hardened facilities. Bombing accuracy was
terrible. The average circular error in 1943 was 1,200 feet, meaning that only 16 percent
of the bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. “Rather than dropping bombs into
pickle barrels, Eighth Air Force bombardiers were having trouble hitting the broad side of
a barn,” said historian McFarland. The prewar prediction that fighters could not intercept
bombers was wrong. The Luftwaffe and ground defenses took a heavy toll on bombers
if they ventured without fighter escort deep into hostile territory. As the loss rate spiked
to eight percent in early 1943, crews calculated their chances of surviving a 25-mission
combat tour. On the Ploesti, Romania, mission in August 1943, losses were 30 percent
and against Schweinfurt in October, 28 percent.
The Turning Point

Nobody tackled the accuracy and casualty problems with more initiative than Col. Curtis E.
LeMay, commander of the 305th Bomb Group at Grafton-Underwood, Britain. He identified
the best bombardiers, made them “lead bombardiers” for the formation, and had all of the
aircraft drop their bombs when the lead bombardier did. LeMay also devised a staggered
“combat box” formation, which gave the B-17 guns maximum fields of fire for mutual
defensive support. After Schweinfurt, the B-17s did not again fly deep into Germany until
long-range P-38 and P-51 fighters were available to escort them. The best of the fighters
by far was the P-51, which could escort bombers to their most distant targets. After 1943,
all of the fighters, including the older P-47s, took advantage of disposable fuel tanks to
extend their range. Eaker did not have much in the way of strategic bombing results to
show for his first two years. However, he said, “When our Eighth Air Force had but 200
bombers operating out of England in 1943, there were more than a million Germans
standing at the anti-aircraft and fighter defenses on the West Wall to defend against them.
And another million Germans were fire wardens or engaged in bomb damage repair.”

The turning point came in early 1944. By then, Eaker had gone on to be commander in
chief of Allied Air Forces in the Mediterranean. Maj. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle replaced him as
commander of Eighth Air Force. Several things had changed.
Finally, there were enough bombers to put together large formations. Joint efforts by Eighth
and Fifteenth Air Forces put up a 750-bomber mission in January and a 1,000-bomber
mission in February. AAF fighters coursed deep into Germany, and in a matter of months,
they had virtually destroyed the Luftwaffe. When the D-Day invasion landed in June,
the Germans were able to launch less than 100 sorties in defense of Normandy. With
fighter escorts and suppression of enemy air defenses, the aircrew loss rate declined in
1944 and 1945. For the bomber offensive as a whole, Eighth Air Force lost 4,182 aircraft
from a total of 273,841 attacking, a rate of 1.5 percent. RAF’s Bomber Command aircraft
loss rate for the same period was 2.5 percent. The 250,000 aircrew members who flew
bomber missions in Eighth Air Force in World War II sustained 58,000 casualties—18,000
killed, 6,500 wounded, and 33,500 missing. AAF bombing accuracy improved. By 1945,
Eighth Air Force was operating at much lower altitudes and was putting up to 60 percent
of its bombs within 1,000 feet of the aiming point, almost four times better than in the
dark days of 1943. Radar bombing, adopted from the British, was an alternative when
conditions did not permit visual delivery, but it was not a precision technique in any true
sense of the word. RAF Bomber Command continued its night area bombing. From 1942
on, 56 percent of its sorties were against cities. On some occasions, notably the bombing
of Dresden in 1945, the AAF joined the British in bombing cities, but overall, less than
four percent of US bombs in Europe were aimed at civilians. The main targets for the
AAF were marshaling yards (27.4 percent of the bomb tonnage dropped), airfields (11.6
percent), oil installations (9.5 percent), and military installations (8.8 percent). The US
Strategic Bombing Survey found that “Allied airpower was decisive in the war in Western
Europe.” That conclusion is sometimes challenged, but the bombing had reduced
German rail traffic, aviation fuel production, steel production, and other aspects of the
wartime infrastructure by 50 to 90 percent. Millions of people were occupied in repairing
the damage and replacing the goods destroyed by bombing. Nazi Armaments Minister
Albert Speer said that the bombing created a “third front” and that “without this great drain
on our manpower, logistics, and weapons, we might well have knocked Russia out of
the war before your invasion of France.” In the Pacific, the question of daylight precision
bombing centered on the last part of the war when the Japanese home islands came
within range of the newest and biggest bomber, the B-29. All of the B-29s were assigned
to Twentieth Air Force, with Arnold retaining command personally as the agent of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
Jet Stream Boosts

The B-29 was rushed into operation in June 1944 with XX Bomber Command. The
headquarters was in India and the B-29s could reach southern Japan from forward
bases in China. LeMay was brought from Europe to head XX Bomber Command. With
the US capture of the Marianas (Saipan, Tinian, and Guam), the B-29s obtained bases
from which they could reach almost any target in Japan. XXI Bomber Command was
52
established there, with Hansell, the AWPD-1 planner, now a brigadier general and the
most fervent of the daylight precision bombing advocates, in command. Over Japan, the
B-29s encountered the jet stream, fierce winds above 25,000 feet that added as much as
250 mph to an aircraft’s speed relative to the ground. The jet stream pushed the bombers
over the target too fast for the Norden bombsight to compensate. Flying against the jet
stream, the speed relative to the ground was so slow that the airplanes were sitting ducks.
Daylight precision bombing faltered, especially on the missions from the Marianas. The
weather permitted only four days a month of visual bombing. The long distances and high
altitudes consumed so much fuel that the bomb loads were relatively small. There were
frequent aborts and ditchings as Twentieth Air Force worked the kinks out of the new
bomber under combat conditions.
Arnold and the AAF were under tremendous pressure to produce strategic results and
help bring the war in the Pacific to an end. Hansell stuck doggedly to daylight precision
bombing, although repeated efforts against such targets as the Nakajima-Musashino
aircraft plant near Tokyo were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, the clamor was building in Washington to switch to incendiary area bombing.
The Office of Scientific Research and Development had developed the highly effective
M-69 incendiary bomb, to which the Japanese style of construction was starkly vulnerable.
Japanese industry, including cottage industries making military parts and equipment, was
so integrated with populated areas that it was difficult to draw the line between them.
The Japanese regarded surrender as dishonorable and fought to the last in battle after
battle. The possibility loomed that an invasion of the Japanese home islands would be
necessary. Plans projected a landing force of 1.8 million US troops and anticipated massive
casualties. The US was no longer as reluctant as it once had been to bomb enemy cities
LeMay, who was the more aggressive commander and who had gotten better results
with the B-29s in India and China, replaced Hansell at XXI Bomber Command in January
1945. XX Bomber Command was phased out and its aircraft and crews were transferred
to the Marianas.
It had become apparent, LeMay said, that “we weren’t going to be able to defeat Japan
using high-altitude precision bombing before the scheduled invasion was to begin.” Acting
on his own initiative, LeMay ordered a massive low-level night mission against Tokyo with
incendiary bombs March 9. Three wings of bombers would attack from the altitudes of
4,000 to 9,200 feet. The aircraft were stripped of excess weight, including most of the guns.
Flying lower and less heavily laden, the B-29s carried more than twice as many bombs
as before. The strike force found landfall by radar and bombed with intervalometers set to
space the bombs 50 feet apart. About a fourth of Tokyo was destroyed and some 84,000
people were killed. It was supposedly while touring the firebombed area that Emperor
Hirohito came to the conclusion that the war had to end as soon as possible. LeMay
continued to order precision attacks and to use high explosive bombs when targets and
weather were suitable, but the emphasis had shifted to incendiary bombing at night.
It systematically laid waste to Japan’s large industrial cities and by July, had reduced
overall Japanese industrial output to some 60 percent from the 1944 level. LeMay and
Arnold believed that the incendiary bombing would eventually bring on a Japanese

surrender. Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, and President Truman were
not convinced. The Japanese military hardliners were prepared to accept enormous
casualties and destruction and had assembled a force of 2.3 million troops in the home
islands to throw back an invasion. Truman decided to use the atomic bomb.
Infrastructure Devastation
Both at Hiroshima Aug. 6 and at Nagasaki Aug. 9, the atomic bombs were delivered
by daylight high-altitude precision drop, using the Norden bombsight. Maj. Thomas W.
Ferebee, bombardier on the B-29 Enola Gay, picked up the aiming point in Hiroshima, the
Aioi Bridge, 12 miles out. The bomb, dropped from 30,700 feet, detonated in an airburst
800 feet (measured on the ground) from the bridge. The bombardier for Nagasaki was
Capt. Kermit K. Beahan on the B-29 Bockscar. The bombing altitude was 31,000 feet and
the explosion was 1,500 feet from the aiming point, the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works.
The hardliners wanted to hold out, but Emperor Hirohito broadcast his rescript of surrender
Aug. 15, bringing World War II to a close. Postwar analysis found that accuracy had been
about the same in Europe and Asia for day visual and radar precision bombing. Eighth Air
Force in Great Britain put 31.8 percent of its bombs within 1,000 feet of the aim point from
an average altitude of 21,000 feet. Fifteenth Air Force in Italy averaged 30.78 percent of
its bombs within 1,000 feet from 20,500 feet. In the Asia and the Pacific, Twentieth Air
Force—45.5 percent of whose sorties were daylight precision despite the emphasis on
area bombing in the last months of the war—put 31 percent of its bombs within 1,000 feet
of the aim point, although the bombing altitudes were on average 4,500 feet lower than for
Eighth Air Force. Critics of various persuasions have challenged the value of the strategic
bombing. However, postwar occupation authorities found that both the German and
Japanese economies and their national infrastructures had been devastated to the point
that they barely functioned. Industries that had supported the war were in shambles. That
level of destruction and disruption was the result of Allied land, sea, and air action—and
airpower had hardly been the least of it. After the war, “pickle barrel” claims passed out of
fashion even though nostalgic bombardiers and the popular press kept the notion alive for
years. Despite the advent of nuclear weapons, the quest for precision delivery of bombs
continued. The first Strategic Air Command Bombing Competition was held in 1948 at
Castle AFB, Calif., with visual and radar releases from 25,000 feet. SAC continued to
develop radar bombing techniques and used them effectively in its Arc Light missions in
Vietnam. Precision guided munitions first gained fame in the Vietnam War, but it was in the
Gulf War and other conflicts of the 1990s that the Air Force finally achieved pickle barrel
accuracy, placing bombs within 10 feet of the aim point. The use of the Global Positioning
System and satellite data for aiming had made the issue of day vs. night irrelevant.
The Mystique of the Norden Bombsight

Other companies made bombsights, but the famous name was Norden. Carl L. Norden
was a Dutch engineer who immigrated to the United States in 1904 and worked for Sperry
Gyroscope before going into business for himself. He lived in the United States for 43
years but never became a citizen Norden began his contract work with the US Navy in
54
1918. He liked the Navy better than the Air Corps, which he considered too flamboyant. He
preferred the Navy as a customer, even though the Navy moved away from high-altitude
horizontal bombing in the 1930s and took the bombsights out of most of its airplanes in
the 1940s. (For no better reason than service parochialism, the Navy held on to its Norden
bombsights, which it was not going to use, even though the AAF had a critical need for
them.) Some commanders were said to have required a “bombardier’s oath” from their
young men. Wording of the oath varied from report to report, but all included the vow
to protect the secrecy of the Norden bombsight “if need be, with my life itself.” Actually,
the secret had been blown, several times over. A Norden employee sold drawings to the
Germans in 1938. The Russians stole a bombsight in 1940 but could not figure it out.
They gave it to their (then) allies, the Germans. The Germans soon had plenty of samples
of their own from the wreckage of US bombers shot down. In 1944, the US gave the
Russians 100 lend-lease patrol aircraft—complete with Norden bombsights and a training
package—in return for allowing US shuttle bombers to land in Soviet-controlled territory.

Focus On: Strategic Attack in the Pacific
THE DOOLITTLE RAID ON TOKYO
(18 APRIL 1942)
Navy Capt Francis S. Low conceived the idea of flying Army medium bombers off a Navy
carrier and attacking Japan. The B-25 was selected because it was small; had sufficient
range to carry two thousand-pound bombs, two thousand miles; and because it took off
and handled very well. General Arnold selected Lt Col James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle to lead
the attack. According to Arnold, “First I found out what B-25 unit had the most experience
and then went to that crew, that organization and called for volunteers and the entire
group, including the group commander, volunteered.”
The training was hard, no one had ever taken off a fully loaded B-25 in less than five
hundred feet. First they had to prove it could be done, then they had to train the people
to do it. Before they were through, the bombers would lift off in only 287 feet. The crews
proved they were good and so were their airplanes.
The raid was carefully planned, nothing was left to chance. Because the attack would be
low-level, Norden bombsights were replaced by a twenty-cent improvisation to prevent
the secret devices from falling into enemy hands. Doolittle then considered what to do if
the Japanese spotted the task force. If intercepted by Japanese surface ships or aircraft,
the aircraft would immediately leave the decks. If they were within range of Tokyo they
would go ahead and bomb Tokyo, even though they would run out of gasoline shortly
thereafter. That was the worst possible scenario. If the aircraft were not in range of Tokyo,
they would go back to Midway. If neither Tokyo nor Midway were in range, the B-25s
would be pushed overboard so the decks could be cleared for the use of the carrier’s own
aircraft.
On the morning of 18 April 1942, Japanese patrol boats sighted the task force. The
boats were quickly destroyed, but they could have transmitted a position report. It was
eight hours before scheduled takeoff, an additional four hundred miles to the target. Gas
reserves would be dangerously low, but they were spotted and they would have to go.
The program went almost according to plan. The B-25s were to bomb the targets, turn in
a general southerly direction, get out to sea as quickly as possible, and after being out
of sight of land, turn and take a westerly course to China. The bombers came in on the
deck and pulled up to about fifteen hundred feet to bomb and to make sure they were not
hit by the fragments of friendly bombs. According to Doolittle, the feeling was “Get the job
done and get the heck out of there.” The actual damage done by the raid was minimal.
There were 16 B-25s each carrying one ton of bombs. In later raids, Gen Curtis E. LeMay
with his Twentieth Air Force, sent out five hundred planes on a mission, each carrying 10
tons of bombs.
56
Reaching a safe haven after the raid wasn’t easy, and because they had to take off much
sooner than planned, they were very low on fuel. One crew went to Vladivostok, the other
15 crews proceeded until they got to the coast of China. When they reached China, two
of the Mitchell Bombers were so low on fuel that they landed in the surf alongside the
beach. Two people were drowned, eight of them got ashore. The weather was quite bad,
so most of the aircraft flew on until they felt they were as close to their final destination
as possible. Having been on dead reckoning for quite awhile, most crews were off target
when they jumped.
On 15 August 1942 it was learned from the Swiss Consulate General in Shanghai that eight
American flyers were prisoners of the Japanese. After the war, the facts were uncovered
in a War Crimes Trial held at Shanghai that opened in February 1946 to try four Japanese
officers for mistreatment of the eight prisoners of war (POW) of the Tokyo Raid. Two of
the original 10 men, Dieter and Fitzmaurice, died when their B-25 ditched off the coast of
China. The other eight, Hallmark, Meder, Nielsen, Lt William G. Farrow, Lt Robert L. Hite,
Lt George Barr, Sgt Harold A. Spatz, and Cpl Jacob DeShazer were captured. In addition
to being tortured, they contracted dysentery and beriberi as a result of the deplorable
conditions under which they were confined. On 28 August 1942, Hallmark, Farrow, and
Spatz were given a “trial” by Japanese officers, although they were never told the charges
against them. On 14 October 1942, Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz were advised they
were to be executed the next day. At 4:30 P.M. on 15 October 1942, the three Americans
were brought by truck to Public Cemetery No. 1 outside Shanghai. In accordance with
proper ceremonial procedures of the Japanese military, they were then shot.
The other five men remained in military confinement on a starvation diet, their health
rapidly deteriorating. In April 1943 they were moved to Nanking and on 1 December 1943,
Meder died. The other four men began to receive slight improvement in their treatment
and by sheer determination and the comfort they received from a lone copy of the Bible,
they survived to August 1945 when they were freed. The four Japanese officers tried for
their war crimes against the eight Tokyo Raiders were found guilty. Three were sentenced
to hard labor for five years and the fourth to a nine-year sentence.
Eighty crew members flew in the Doolittle Raid, 64 returned to fight again. They were part
of a team recognized for its professionalism and heroism, a rich heritage remembered by
a new generation of airmen. When the news of the raid was released, American morale
zoomed from the depths to which it had plunged following Japan’s successes. It also
caused the Japanese to transfer back to the home islands fighter units that could have
been used against the Allies. In comparison to the B-29 attacks against Japan two years
later, the Tokyo Raid was a token effort. However, it was an example of brilliant tactics
and achieved a moral victory for the nation.

PLOESTI RAID (AUGUST 1943)
The oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania, provided Germany with 35 percent of its oil. Air
planners figured it would take many high-level attacks by huge fleets of heavy bombers
to destroy the refineries. Col Jacob E. Smart, a member of Arnold’s Advisory Council,
believed a low-level attack might prove successful. Smart had seen A-20s in training hit
moving targets while flying low and fast. This led him to conclude that aircraft accuracy
would allow a low-level attack of Ploesti. Smart believed a low-level attack might mitigate
the extensive air defenses. Not everyone held this opinion. Col Richard Hughes, an AAF
target expert, protested that Allied pilots did not have the necessary skills or experience to
tackle such a complex mission. However, with President Roosevelt and General Arnold’s
backing, the mission plans were built.
The plan called for a 2,700-mile mission conducted by more than three hundred bombers
to attack seven refineries. The mission was flown by IX Bomber Command whose training
included bombing a full-scale outline of the Ploesti complex in the Libyan desert. The
operation included the 44th, 93d, 98th, 376th, and 389th Bomb Groups.
On 1 August, 178 B-24s took off to bomb Ploesti. The 376th Bomb Group, commanded by
Col Keith Compton, led the mission. The lead navigator was in another plane that ditched
into the Mediterranean Sea several hours after launching. Colonel Compton misidentified
the initial point, a ground feature used to coordinate the attack, and led his group on
a route 30 miles south of Ploesti. Three of the five groups were behind schedule and
Compton’s error eroded any remaining attack coordination.
One hundred sixty-four B-24 Liberators reached Ploesti and attacked at levels often
lower than the refineries’ towers. Bombers flying through the explosions of oil tanks
were assaulted by merciless flak trains and machine gun fire. B-24 gunners dueled with
gunners in towers and church steeples. Ploesti was also defended by 120 German and
two hundred Romanian fighter aircraft. The 98th Bomb Group, led by Col John Kane,
was the only one to fly its assigned course and arrive on schedule. The courage and
determination of the aircrews is the sole reason the raid had any success.
Flying so low that aircraft had to ascend to avoid smokestacks 210 feet high, the bombers
took high losses. Seventy-three B-24s were lost in the raid and another 55 suffered major
damage. Nearly five hundred aircrew were killed or wounded and more than one hundred
became prisoners of war. Navigation and timing problems prevented a coordinated
attack. Despite this, aircrews managed to destroy 60 percent of the complex’s output.
Five airmen, including Colonel Kane, received the Medal of Honor for their mission to
Ploesti. This was the most Medals of Honor awarded for any single engagement in World
War II.
58
Focus On:
THE REGENSBURG/
SCHWEINFURT RAIDS (1943)
The growing strength of German fighter operations in Europe was a great concern to the
Allies in 1943. On 10 June 1943 the combined Chiefs of Staff issued the directive known
as “Pointblank.” This directive placed German fighter strength as the top strategic priority.
In order to hurt the German’s fighter operation, Colonel Hughes, one of the Allied air
planners, decided to attack production facilities at Regensburg and Schweinfurt. A large
percentage of Germany’s fighters were produced in Regensburg in southeast Germany.
An equally critical target was Schweinfurt, a major ball-bearing production center.
The plan was for General LeMay’s 4th Bomb Wing to fly to Regensburg, bomb the
Messerschmitt plant, then fly across the Mediterranean and land in North Africa. The arrival
of the new B-17F with greater range made this possible. The Luftwaffe was expected to
meet the attack early, then land and refuel for the attack on the bombers as they headed
back to England. The Allied plan, however, called for the 1st Bomb Wing to follow the 4th
by only 15 minutes along the same flight path before breaking off to bomb Schweinfurt.
By the time the Germans figured out that the 4th Bomb Wing was not returning and that
the 1st was heading for Schweinfurt, they would be on the ground short of both fuel and
ammunition. The plan called for the biggest aerial diversion ever attempted with three
B-26 groups raiding coastal airfields to draw Luftwaffe fighters from the 1st Bomb Wing.
This would allow the 1st to attack Schweinfurt relatively unmolested.
On 17 August 1943, 139 B-17s, with LeMay in the lead, crossed the Dutch coast headed
for southeast Germany. The 4th Bomb Wing lost 17 aircraft en route to Regensburg but
the remaining 122 bombers conducted a very accurate mission from less than 20,000
feet. As the 4th left Regensburg, the 1st Bomb Wing was still over the North Sea, five
hours behind schedule—the timing plan was awry.
The Luftwaffe expected the 4th Bomb Wing to return to England and massed their fighters
in unprecedented numbers. The 1st Bomb Wing flew into this mass of three hundred
enemy fighters over Germany. By the time the 1st reached the Schweinfurt initial point,
36 B-17s were lost. The four ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt were tough targets to find
under ideal circumstances. However, the delay in launching caused an approach heading
change to avoid flying into a setting sun. This change combined with the Germans’ artificial
fog generators made the task nearly impossible. The 10 bomb groups scattered their
bombs all over the town while the Luftwaffe refueled and rearmed their aircraft. The return
trip for the 1st Bomb Wing was tougher than the trip into Germany.
The Regensburg/Schweinfurt raids cost the Allies 60 B-17s, 16 percent of the dispatched
force. General Arnold reported the operation a success. In terms of lost production, the
attack on Regensburg probably accounted for one thousand lost Me-109s or about three
weeks of total fighter production. At Schweinfurt, the attack proved to have little if any

effect. Three of the five factories were severely damaged but few of the machine tools
that produced ball bearings were destroyed. “The Raid” showed how difficult and costly
it was to conduct air warfare. However, “The Raid” foretold the story of the day when the
Luftwaffe would not be able to stop Allied bombing.
60
BOMBING TOKYO (9–10 MARCH 1945)
The Doolittle raid on Tokyo had done a lot for US morale, but it was not a viable method of
conducting sustained strategic bombing of Japan. To bring the full weight of airpower to
bear on Japan, the United States built bombers of unprecedented range (the B-29s) and
captured islands from which B-29s could reach Japan. In November 1944, US bombers
finally returned to Tokyo in the form of B-29s flying out of Saipan.
The Japanese tried to defend against the B-29s but they grossly underestimated the
power of strategic bombing. They chose to concede air superiority over Japan to the
United States in order to use their main air strength to oppose Allied surface forces. This
disastrous miscalculation was partly due to the fact that Japanese air forces were tightly
controlled by army and navy leaders who had a weak understanding of airpower.
Limited Japanese defenses, however, did not guarantee successful US bombing. The
B-29 was the best bomber of World War II, but it did not have the ability to hit precision
targets through clouds. The consistently bad weather over Japan made sustained
precision bombing of Japanese factories impossible. On the night of 9 March 1945,
General LeMay, commanding B-29 operations against Japan, ordered a radical change
in tactics. On this raid the B-29s did not execute their normal daylight, high-altitude,
formation attack with high-explosives but instead, they hit Tokyo with incendiary bombs,
at night, from low altitude, flying individually. Flying at night at low altitude took advantage
of Japanese weakness in night-fighters and low-altitude air defenses. The low-altitude
individual bombing runs also enabled the B-29s to carry less fuel and hence more bombs.
Since LeMay expected little enemy fighter opposition, he removed the gunners, guns,
and ammunition from the B-29s and replaced them with still more bombs. The change
in tactics doubled the bomb-load of each B-29 and incendiary bombs were much more
effective against the highly flammable Japanese city than high-explosive bombs.
The results were stunning. Before 9 March 1945, the B-29s had done very little damage
to the Japanese war effort, but on that night they burned out 16 square miles of Tokyo
and killed more than 80,000 Japanese in the most devastating air raid ever. Subsequent
firebombing devastated more than 60 Japanese cities, left millions of Japanese homeless,
and radically reduced Japan’s military production.

Focus On: The Ultimate Strategic Attack in the Pacific
THE HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI BOMBINGS
(AUGUST 1945)
President Truman and the armed forces had three strategic options for inducing the
Japanese surrender: continue the fire-bombing and blockade, invasion, or use the
atomic bomb. Truman was aware that the first two options would probably not be very
effective methods to induce the Japanese to surrender. The Battle for Okinawa caused
48,000 American casualties when the Japanese refused to surrender. So it was the right
time to resolutely make a decision. Gradually, US authorities made preparations for the
decision to use the bomb, as it was close to production. The Interim Committee on S-1
suggested to the president that the bomb should be used directly against Japan, because
a demonstration explosion was not thought to be a strong enough representation of the
power that the bomb held. Several US military leaders went with the president to the Big
Three meeting at Potsdam in July, and discussions continued there. It was determined
then that the bomb should be used. On 25 July Truman prepared the order for use of the
first atomic bomb as soon after 3 August as weather permitted on one of the four target
cities. The Potsdam Proclamation was issued during the Potsdam meeting by the heads
of government of the United States, Britain, and China. It warned of “utter devastation of
the Japanese homeland” unless Japan surrendered unconditionally.
At approximately 2:00 A.M. on the morning of 6 August, the Enola Gay, carrying an atomic
bomb, started on the long flight from Tinian Island. The Enola Gay was one of 15 B-29s
modified specifically for the highly secret atomic bomb missions. These airplanes were
outfitted with new engines and propellers and faster-acting pneumatic bomb bay doors.
Two observation planes carrying cameras and scientific instruments followed behind her.
After 6:00 A.M., the bomb was fully armed on board the Enola Gay. Col Paul W. Tibbets
Jr., pilot of the Enola Gay, announced to the crew that the plane was carrying the world’s
first atomic bomb. The trip to Japan was smooth. At about 7:00 A.M., the Japanese radar
net detected aircraft heading toward Japan, and they broadcast the alert throughout the
Hiroshima area. Soon afterward when an American weather plane circled over the city,
the people went back to their daily work thinking the danger had passed. At 8:00 A.M.
the Japanese detected two B-29’s heading toward Hiroshima. The radio stations quickly
broadcast a warning for the people to take shelter, but many did not follow the advice.
They thought that it was the same as the first time. At 8:09 A.M., the crew of the Enola
Gay at 26,000 feet could see the city appear below; it was time to drop the bomb. Just
then, they received a message indicating that the weather was good over Hiroshima. The
bomb was released at 8:16 A.M. A terrible, strong, and unimaginable explosion occurred
near the central section of the city. The crew of the Enola Gay saw a column of smoke
rising fast and intense fires springing up. The astonishing result of the first atomic strike:
it killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people, injured another 70,000, and burned almost
4.4 square miles. On 9 August, Nagasaki was bombed by a B-29 named Bock’s Car. The
Japanese unconditionally surrendered on 14 August 1945.
62
GENERAL OF THE ARMY
HENRY H. “HAP” ARNOLD
• Taught to fly by Orville and Wilbur Wright.

• A five-star general and two-time winner of the Mackay Trophy for aeronautical
achievement.
• In 1934, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for demonstrating the
range of strategic airpower by leading a flight of B-10 bombers from Washington,
D.C., to Alaska.
• Named Chief of the Army Air Corps in 1938. During World War II, he became the
first Air Chief to sit as an equal member on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• He was the commanding general of the Army Air Forces (AAF) during World War II.
Henry H. Arnold was one of the truly great men in American airpower. Taught to fly by
the Wright brothers, he rose steadily in rank and responsibility throughout the ’20s and
’30s and became the commanding general of the Army Air Forces during World War II. In
1944 he was promoted to five-star rank, but his health was very poor, he suffered several
heart attacks during the war, and retired less than a year after Japan surrendered.
Graduating from West Point in 1907, Arnold had hoped to join the cavalry. However, his
cadet performance was so dismal he was relegated to the infantry. After a tour in the
Philippines, he reapplied to the cavalry, but again was refused. Largely out of a desire
to escape from the infantry, Arnold then applied for the Signal Corps and became one
of America’s first military pilots. Aviation was extremely dangerous in those early days,
and after several crashes and near crashes, Arnold elected to ground himself. After more
than three years of desk work, he overcame his fears and returned to flying. Because of
his relatively extensive experience in aviation, and much to his chagrin, he was forced to
remain in Washington on the Air Service staff during World War I.
After Armistice Day, he slowly began his steady rise in rank and responsibility. He
commanded wings and bases, became a protégé of Billy Mitchell, twice won the Mackay
Trophy for aeronautical achievement, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for
leading a flight of B-10 bombers to Alaska to display the range of strategic airpower,
and was named assistant to the chief of the Air Corps in 1935. When Oscar Westover
was killed in a plane crash in 1938, Arnold succeeded him as chief. In this position he
was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the massive industrial expansion the war
would require. During the war he sat as an equal member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
was responsible for guiding the air strategy of the various theaters. Belying his nickname
“Hap” (short for “happy”), Arnold was a difficult taskmaster. He drove himself so hard
during the war that he suffered several heart attacks and he pushed his subordinates

just as hard. This did not endear him to everyone in the USAAF, but it was just what was
needed to run the largest air force during the largest war in the history of the world. His
drive, vision, and sense of initiative were indispensable in leading the air arm during the
war and setting the stage for the creation of the US Air Force shortly after the war.
64
LT GEN CLAIRE L. CHENNAULT
• In the 1930s, he was the Air Corps Tactical School’s most famous proponent of
pursuit tactics at a time when strategic bombardment was premier.
• Forced out of the Air Corps in 1937 because of bronchitis, he went to China to
advise Chiang Kaishek on building an air force.
• Commanded the American Volunteer Group, better known as the “Flying Tigers.”
• Under his leadership the Flying Tigers overcame severe operational handicaps
and achieved a two- to-one kill ratio over the Japanese.
Claire L. Chennault’s reputation as leader of the Flying Tigers has been immortalized in
movies and novels, making him one of America’s more famous airmen. Chennault arrived
at the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) in 1930 with a reputation as a premier pursuit
pilot. His ideas concerning pursuit employment evolved from much thought and practical
experience. But Air Corps doctrine was making a decisive shift in favor of bombardment,
and Chennault’s attempts to stem that tide were futile. Chennault’s abrasive personality
negated his arguments, and his colleagues found it more satisfying simply to ignore him.
Suffering from a variety of physical ailments and realizing his theories were out of tune
with Air Corps policy, he retired in 1937. Soon after, he traveled to China, where he
served as an adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, and formed the Flying Tigers volunteer group to
fight against the Japanese. The much-storied group of mercenaries- turned-heroes was
well suited to Chennault’s aggressive and unconventional personality.
When America entered the war, the Flying Tigers were incorporated into the Fourteenth
Air Force, and Chennault was promoted to brigadier general and made its commander.
Chennault was an outstanding tactician, whose determination in the face of overwhelming
supply and equipment difficulties kept the Fourteenth Air Force in the field, but his
strategic ideas were limited to his tactical mindset. Never on good terms with his Air
Corps colleagues, Chennault exacerbated this relationship with his constant complaints
and his tendency to circumvent the chain of command by dealing directly with Chiang
and President Roosevelt. Although knowing how this infuriated his superiors, Chennault
persisted. As a consequence, George Marshall thought him disloyal and unreliable. Hap
Arnold and Joe Stilwell disapproved of his command style. Even if his strategic theories
had been correct, his method of promoting them ensured their demise. He believed that a
small force of aircraft, mostly pursuit with a handful of bombers, could so disrupt Japanese
logistics as to lead to its eventual defeat. In retrospect, it is doubtful if any amount of
tactical airpower could have prevented Japan from overrunning China, much less brought
about its defeat.

LT GEN IRA C. EAKER
• Lt Gen Ira Eaker was commander of the VIII Bomber Command in England which
became the Eighth Air Force in 1944.
• He piloted the Question Mark in its record-breaking air refueling flight over California
in 1929. The plane remained aloft for 150 hours, 40 minutes, and 15 seconds.
• Served as aide to Maj Gen James Fechet, the Air Corps Chief, and as private pilot
to Maj Gen Douglas MacArthur.
• In 1927 he piloted the San Francisco, the only plane to complete a 23,000 mile
Pan American goodwill flight on schedule. For this he was awarded his first
Distinguished Flying Cross.
• During World War II, he commanded Allied Air Forces in the Mediterranian.
• He was deputy commander of the Army Air Forces in 1945–46.
One of the great pioneer airmen, Ira C. Eaker, met “Hap” Arnold and Carl Spaatz at
Rockwell Field in 1918, and the three became friends and colleagues for life. Eaker was
one of the premier pilots between the wars, participating in the Pan American flight of
1926–27 and the Question Mark flight of 1929. The Question Mark project was the product
of Eaker’s imagination, political savvy, and zeal. He selected a trimotored Fokker and
a Douglas C-1 for the flights. On 1 January 1929, the Fokker took off from San Diego,
California, and droned back and forth at 70 MPH between Los Angeles, California, and
San Diego for six days. Eaker piloted the Question Mark with Pete Quesada as copilot
and Maj Carl Spaatz in back to hook up the hose during refueling. On 7 January the
Fokker’s left engine quit and the Question Mark was forced to land with a record-breaking
150 hours, 40 minutes, and 15 seconds aloft.
Eaker was also politically well connected, serving not only as an aide to Maj Gen James
Fechet, the Air Corps chief, but also as the private pilot of Gen Douglas MacArthur. An
excellent writer with a graduate degree in journalism, he figured prominently in airpower
public relations efforts during the 1930s and coauthored several aviation books with
Hap Arnold. During World War II he joined Spaatz in England to head the VIII Bomber
Command and eventually Eighth Air Force. In early 1944 Eaker moved down to Italy to
command the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces.
The task of organizing and standing up the Eighth was extremely daunting. Eaker’s talents
as a leader and manager were essential. Strategic bombing was not a proven concept,
the green Eighth was entering combat against an enemy already battle tested, and the
prodigious production capacity of America not yet manifest. Moreover, just as it appeared
the Eighth was strong enough to play a major role in the war against Germany, it was
stripped of men and machines for operations in North Africa and then Italy. Arnold pushed
Eaker to do more, and finally, against Eaker’s wishes, he was promoted and moved
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to Italy, while his place at Eighth was taken by James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle. Soon after
Doolittle took over, Eaker’s labors bore fruit: air superiority over the Luftwaffe was gained,
the invasion of France took place, and the sweep across northern Europe eventually led
to victory.
In April 1945, Eaker was named deputy commander of the AAF and chief of the Air Staff.
He retired from active duty on 31 July 1947.

GEN CARL A. “TOOEY” SPAATZ
• One of the most favored American air commanders of World War II. Both Generals
Eisenhower and Bradley rated Spaatz the best combat leader in the European
theater.
• Received the Distinguished Service Cross for shooting down three German aircraft
during World War I.
• The project leader for the Question Mark flight which refueled in the air to stay
aloft over 150 hours. Spaatz rode in the rear of the aircraft where he reeled in and
hooked up the refueling hose from the tanker plane.
Carl A. Spaatz was born 28 June 1891, in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. In 1910 he was
appointed to the United States Military Academy. Upon graduation on 12 June 1914,
he was commissioned into the Infantry. He served with the Twenty-fifth United States
Infantry at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, from 4 October 1914 to 13 October 1915, when
he was detailed as a student in the Aviation School at San Diego, California, until 15 May
1916.
Spaatz went to France with the American Expeditionary Forces in command of the 31st
Aero Squadron and joined the 2d Pursuit Group in September 1918. He was officially
credited with shooting down three German Fokker planes, and received the Distinguished
Service Cross. After World War I he reverted to his permanent rank of captain, 27 February
1920, but was promoted to major on 1 July 1920.
Spaatz commanded the Army plane Question Mark in its refueling endurance flight over
southern California, 1–7 January 1929, keeping the plane aloft a record total of 150 hours,
40 minutes, and 15 seconds, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, in January 1942, General Spaatz was assigned as chief
of the AAF Combat Command in Washington, D.C. In May 1942 he became commander
of the Eighth Air Force to prepare for the American bombing of Germany. On 7 July he
was appointed commanding general of the AAF in the European theater in addition to his
duties as commander of Eighth Air Force.
On 1 December 1942, Spaatz became commanding general of the Twelfth Air Force in
North Africa. He returned to England in January 1944, to command the US Strategic Air
Forces in Europe, which he headed throughout the preinvasion period and the ensuing
campaign which culminated with the utter defeat of Germany. His service in Africa won
an award of the Distinguished Service Medal, and the accomplishments of his Strategic
Air Force in 1944 earned him the Robert J. Collier Trophy for that year, awarded annually
to the American making the most outstanding contribution to aviation. He was present at
all three signings of unconditional surrender by the enemy—Rheims, Berlin, and Tokyo.
In February 1946, he was nominated to become commander of the Army Air Forces. In
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September 1947 he was appointed by President Harry S. Truman as the First Chief of
Staff of the new United States Air Force until 30 April 1948. General Spaatz retired on 30
June 1948.

GEN GEORGE C. KENNEY
• George C. Kenney was a fighter pilot during World War I. He downed two German
aircraft and won the Distinguished Service Cross.
• Commander of Fifth Air Force and Far East Air Forces providing airpower for Gen
Douglas MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific Theater during World War II.
• One of only four airmen to hold the rank of four-star general during World War II.
• One of the most innovative operational airmen of World War II.
• The first commander in chief of Strategic Air Command from 1946 to 1948.
George C. Kenney was America’s top Airman in the Pacific theater during World War
II. Kenney had served as a fighter pilot in the First World War, downing two German
aircraft and winning the Distinguished Service Cross. Between the wars he attended
Command and General Staff College, the Army War College, and taught at the Air Corps
Tactical School before heading Operations and Training for General Headquarters Air
Forces. He also earned a reputation as an accomplished engineer through assignments
at Wright Field, and became recognized as an expert in tactical aviation. Significantly, he
was serving as an air attaché to Paris during the German invasion of France in 1940 and
witnessed the effectiveness of airpower in that campaign.
In July 1942, Arnold selected Kenney to become Douglas MacArthur’s air deputy. For
the rest of the war the short, fiery, and tireless Kenney served as commander of the Fifth
Air Force and then Far East Air Forces under the difficult and demanding MacArthur.
His success in such battles as Bismarck Sea, Rabaul, Wewak, and the Philippine
campaign were dramatic, and he has become the prototype for the modern concept of
an “air component commander,” the one individual in charge of all aviation assets in a
theater. Kenney’s grasp of what is today called “operational art” and how airpower could
be used to complement the operations of land and sea forces was outstanding, and he
was considered by many to be the most accomplished combat air strategist of the war.
In April 1945 he was promoted to full general—one of only four Airmen holding that rank
during the war. However, Arnold had more complete confidence in Spaatz and after the
war Spaatz was named Arnold’s successor. Kenney had hoped to become Chief of Staff
after Spaatz but Hoyt Vandenberg, nine years younger than Kenney, replaced Spaatz
as chief of staff in 1948. Kenney was instead given command of the new Strategic Air
Command (SAC) after the war. When the Berlin Crisis of 1948 broke out, Vandenberg
conducted an investigation of SAC’s war readiness. The results were unacceptable, so
Vandenberg replaced Kenney with Curtis E. LeMay. Kenney was then named commander
of Air University. He retired from that position in 1951.
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GEN BENJAMIN O. DAVIS, JR.
“SILENCE”
• The first black to graduate from West Point this century and later became the first
African-American Air Force general.
• During his years at West Point he was officially “silenced” by all cadets—no one
spoke to him for four years except on official business.
• Commissioned in 1936, earned his wings at Tuskegee in 1941 and was a lieutenant
colonel squadron commander in August 1942.
• Commanded the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron in North Africa in 1943 and a
fighter wing in Korea in 1953.
• His commands culminated with his third star and command of Thirteenth Air Force.
Born 18 December 1912 in Washington, D.C., to an Army First Lieutenant who later would
become a general himself, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. was born right into the strife that came
along with being black in America at the beginning of the 20th Century. Determination
and perseverance would become trademarks of his character and function as the moral
compass that navigated his decisions throughout life.
He was raised by a much disciplined father and step-mother after his biological mother
passed away when he was only three years old. Manners, education, both formal and
informal, sports and extra-curricular activities were all important to Davis, Sr. and thus
passed on to Davis, Jr. These qualities would prove beneficial as Davis, Jr. would endure
years of struggles due to racial inequalities.
The four years General Benjamin Davis, Jr. spent at the United States Military Academy
in West Point, New York, between 1932-1936, were arguably the four toughest, and yet
most inspiring years of his life. The events that occurred during this timeframe forever
shaped his life, the United States Army and the future of the United States itself. The
treatment he received as a minority went beyond anything one would comprehend by
today’s standards. Aside official orders, he was not spoken to nor was he allowed to
have interactions with other cadets aside official interactions. Despite the adverse
circumstances, he was determined to succeed at all costs and he believed he had more
to offer the nation. His relentless tenacity propelled him to prosper graduating 35th out of
276 cadets in his class.
As was customary at the time, his only choice for assignment was to either an infantry or
cavalry unit. He chose infantry taking him to Fort Benning, Georgia. After serving a year
as an infantry company commander, he graduated from the Infantry School and assumed
duties as Professor of Military Science at Tuskegee Institute. In May, 1941 he entered

Advanced Flying School and received his pilot wings in early 1942. General Davis, Jr.
was then transferred to the Army Air Force in May 1942 and became the first commander
of the 99th Fighter Squadron, a historic organization that became known as the Tuskegee
Airmen… the fierce Red Tail fighters.
Throughout his career General Davis, Jr. continued to face trials and tribulations. He
was routinely discriminated against because of his skin color, questioned of his stature in
society, and discounted as a human being in his ability to be a leader of men. His vision
of becoming a pilot in the Army Air Corps led to his pursuit of justice based on a man’s
knowledge and abilities and not his ethnicity nor his heritage.
General Davis, Jr. retired at the rank of Lieutenant General on 1 February 1970. He
was advanced to the four-star General rank on 9 December 1998 and had his four stars
pinned on by President Clinton. Operation DESERT FOX, a four-day strategic bombing
campaign against Iraqi forces, was initiated only seven days later on 16 December 1998,
nostalgically linking now General Davis, Jr. to an Air Force he could have only envisioned
and on which he had such a direct impact.
Respectfully fitting, General Davis, Jr. passed away on 4 July 2002, exiting this world on
a day our entire nation celebrates together the independence of tyranny, recognizing all
those who have fought, such as General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., to change the face of a
nation for its betterment.
“I was silenced solely because cadets did not want blacks at West Point. Their only purpose
was to freeze me out. What they did not realize was that I was stubborn enough to put up with
their treatment to reach the goal I had come to attain.”1
General Davis, Jr.’s life, from his early years to his final days, directly matched the AFDD-
1 institutional competencies of Organizational-Strategic Thinking-Vision and Adaptability.
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Airpower through the Cold War, Part I

• Comprehend the impact that airpower and other key events had on
the USAF and US policy during the Cold War.
• Explain the Soviet action taken in the blockading of Berlin.
• Identify the Western Allies’ response to the Berlin blockade.
• Summarize the significance of airpower during the Berlin airlift.
• Identify General LeMay’s accomplishments and impact on the Air Force.
• Describe the significant use of airpower in the Korean War.
• Give examples of the contributions of airpower during the Korean War.
• Describe the effect the Soviet nuclear threat had on US missile
development.
• Identify which missile became the mainstay of SAC’s missile retaliatory
force.
• Respond to the importance of airpower during the Cold War.
Airpower through the Cold War, Part I 73

AIR POWER IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
After the war the U.S. Army Air Forces established a number of major Commands—
Strategic Air Command (SAC), Air Defense Command (ADC), Tactical Air Command
(TAC), Air Materiel Command (AMC), and Air Transport Command (ATC) among others.
Before his retirement, Hap Arnold, working to insure that America’s air force remained at
the forefront of science and technology, established a civilian Scientific Advisory Group
(now the Scientific Advisory Board), the RAND Corporation “think tank,” and several
flight testing and engineering centers. Arnold proclaimed “the first essential” of air power
to be “preeminence in research.” He and General Spaatz proclaimed the second to be
education, establishing Air University as a major command.
If the USAAF remained subordinate to the Army, its wartime record and the atomic bomb
guaranteed that its status would change. The atomic bomb had altered the nature of
warfare. The organization that delivered it, the Twentieth Air Force, was the predecessor
of SAC, soon to become the world’s dominant military force and responsible for conducting
long-range combat and reconnaissance operations anywhere in the world. The USSBS
had concluded from World War II that “the best way to win a war is to prevent it from
occurring.” A Strategic Air Command, properly equipped and trained, also would help
deter any adversary state from starting a global atomic war and would thereby ensure
international peace.
At war’s end the USAAF continued its quest for an American military establishment
composed of three coequal and separate military departments. The Navy Department
opposed unification and the formation of a separate air force, but the War Department,
led by General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower, supported the drive for a separate air
component. The National Security Act of July 26,1947, was a compromise, creating a
National Military Establishment under a civilian Secretary of National Defense (later
designated as Secretary of Defense), with three coequal services that preserved the air
arms for the Navy and Marines. President Truman’s first choice for Secretary of National
Defense, Robert Patterson, turned down the job and James Forrestal, then serving as
Secretary of the Navy, was appointed. The U.S. Air Force (USAF) gained its independence
on September 18, 1947, under the Department of the Air Force, headed by Secretary of
the Air Force Stuart Symington. General Carl Spaatz was named the first Air Force Chief
of Staff.
At a time of demobilization, the National Security Act only postponed a confrontation
between the Navy and Air Force over roles and missions in an era of declining defense
dollars. For over a century, the Navy had been America’s first line of defense and its
offensive arm overseas until the era of the long-range bomber and the atomic bomb. Air
power appealed to an American love of technology, a desire to avoid heavy casualties,
and to austerity-minded presidents like Harry Truman and especially Dwight Eisenhower.
The atomic bomb made air power the preeminent force in the postwar world. Giant six-
and later ten-engine B-36 Peacemakers seemed to eclipse the Navy’s expensive and
vulnerable aircraft carriers in the nuclear world. A group of naval officers, led by Admirals
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Louis Denfeld, Chief of Naval Operations, and Arthur Radford, protested when budget
restraints forced a Navy cutback from eight to four carriers and the cancellation of a
planned supercarrier, the USS United States, large enough to launch atom bomb-carrying
aircraft. The outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950 ensured higher defense budgets and
limited further interservice contention.
Among the changes wrought by World War II for the U.S. Air Force was that affecting its
basic composition. What had been a predominantly white male force became over time
more representative of American diversity. African Americans had served in many roles
during World War II, most visibly as fighter pilots in the 332d Fighter Group in Italy. Their
combat record helped pave the way for the full racial integration of the armed forces
under President Truman’s July 1948 Executive Order 9981 which stated: “There shall be
equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the Armed Services without regard
to race.” The Air Force achieved racial integration quickly and smoothly, eliminating its
last segregated unit (the 332d Wing) in June 1949. American airmen first fought together
without racial separation during the Korean War—Captain Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr., an
African-American recognized and decorated for his performance as a reconnaissance pilot,
came out of that experience. Equal opportunities and promotions for African Americans
came more slowly, however, causing several riots at Air Force installations in the 1970s;
but the service’s commitment to a strong equal opportunity program erased remaining
racial barriers. The armed services in general were ahead of the rest of American society
on this issue.
Similarly, the Air Force helped lead the nation in the struggle to extend equal opportunities
to women; 29,323 women served in the Army Air Forces in World War II as part of the
Women’s Army Corps (established on July 1, 1943); another 1,074 served as civilian
Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS). Under the leadership of Nancy Love and
Jacqueline Cochran, WASPs ferried aircraft and trained male airmen. President Truman
signed the Women’s Armed Services Act on June 12, 1948, establishing the WAFs
(Women in the Air Force). Another barrier to professional advancement was removed in
1976 when women entered Air Force non-combat pilot training programs for the first time,
and 1993 when the first female combat pilots entered active service.
Atomic bombs carried by strategic bombers eventually ruled postwar Air Force and
Department of Defense (DOD) war planning. Only aircraft such as the B-29 Superfortress,
the B-36 Peacemaker, and the all-jet B-47 Stratojet, could carry atomic bombs that weighed
upwards of 10,000 pounds (the Mark II-IV series). The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC),
formed in 1946 to replace the wartime Manhattan Engineering District, succeeded in
reducing the size of the bomb (the Mark 7 weighed 1,680 pounds) but did not change
the basic atomic equation. A handful of Air Force bombers carried more power than all of
history’s armies and navies combined.
Under postwar demobilization, which affected the AEC just as much as the armed
services, the nation’s stockpile of atomic weapons rose to only nine in 1946. In 1947 the
commission took over weapons-building programs and the stockpile reached thirteen
as the Truman administration and the JCS discussed the level of production necessary

to maintain an effective deterrent. In December 1947 the JCS approved a goal of 400 weapons
for the AEC. At the same time, while SAC began to recover from the chaos of demobilization, its
state of readiness remained low. Under General George C. Kenney and his deputy, Major General
Clements McMullen, it assigned high priority to establishing a rigorous aircrew training program.
In addition, vast distances to targets challenged the skill and endurance of its aircrews. Although
SAC operated the B-36 intercontinental bomber to strike anywhere in the world, it initiated the
development of an aerial refueling capability in fall 1947. In 1948 it adopted the British hose method,
converting some piston-engine B-29s to tankers, and formed two aerial refueling squadrons in June
1948. SAC later adopted the Boeing flying boom method of refueling, made standard in 1958. Using
four aerial refuelings, the B-50 Lucky Lady II flew nonstop around the world between February 26
and March 2, 1949, to demonstrate the technique’s global strike potential. Destined to serve Air
Force jet bombers and fighters for the next five decades and beyond, the jet turbine-powered KC-
135 Stratotanker, became operational in 1957.
The crisis that precipitated the Berlin Airlift began on June 24, 1948. Although there were a plethora
of causes and reasons precipitating the blockade, it primarily revolved around American plans for
rebuilding a separate West German State. This led the Soviet Union to initiate a ground blockade
of the Western-controlled zones of Berlin, 90 miles inside Soviet-controlled East Germany. Forcing
the blockade would have required the West to launch a general mobilization, fire first shots, and
possibly set off another global war. Although the United States had deployed the conventional B-29
to Europe, perhaps in a calculated bluff that relied on the aircraft’s reputation as an atomic delivery
vehicle, the crisis continued. The Allies saw an opportunity to resupply Berlin and feed its 2.5 million
beleaguered inhabitants by air through three air corridors guaranteed by agreement with the Soviet
Union. Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay, then commanding U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE),
pieced together an airlift force of C-47 Skytrains left over from World War II, but the 80 tons per
day they supplied were not enough. On July 30, 1948, Major General William Tunner, who had run
the Himalayan “Hump” airlift during the war, replaced LeMay, the combat leader. Reinforced with
four-engine C-54 Skymasters and C-74 Globe-masters, Tunner initiated around-the- clock flights
guided by ground control approach radar. His aircraft landed every three minutes, carrying a record
capacity of 5,620 tons per day. When the airlift appeared to succeed, the Soviet Union threatened
to interfere with it.
President Truman responded by sending a wing of B-29s, widely described in the world press at the
time as “atomic” bombers, to England. They were not, but the Soviet Union apparently believed they
were and made no move to interrupt the airlift. In May 1949 it provided the United States with the
first victory of the Cold War (without a shot being fired) when, after eleven months, 277,000 flights,
and 2.3 million tons of life-sustaining supplies, it opened Berlin to surface traffic. (Please reference
the “Focus On: Strategic Airlift” article.) A few months later in late August, it exploded an atomic
bomb of its own, causing Americans grave national security concerns. Almost before the Truman
administration could respond, it faced a new crisis in Korea.
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LIMITED WAR IN KOREA
When North Korean forces invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, in a surprise attack,
they awakened the United States to the dangers of brushfire war in the atomic age.
The earlier crisis of 1948 in Berlin, Communist successes in Czechoslovakia in 1948
and China in 1949, and news of the Soviet explosion of an atomic device in 1949, had
prompted the National Security Council (NSC) to issue a secret directive, NSC-68, in
April 1950. It judged the Soviet Union to be bent on world domination. NSC-68 called for
a massive increase in defense spending of 20 percent of the gross national product if
necessary, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and the containment of Communism.
The sustained American-led buildup of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in
Europe was unmistakable evidence of containment, but Korea would be the first test of
revitalized American resolve.
A heavy reliance on the nuclear strike force left the Air Force ill-prepared to deal with a
conventional war on the other side of the globe. Moreover, when Congress approved the
use of force to repel the North Korean invasion on June 30, 1950, the absence of a formal
declaration of war introduced the Air Force to the new tribulations of limited war. The few
air combat units of Major General Earle Partridge’s Fifth Air Force, the main combat force
of Lieutenant General George Stratemeyer’s Far Eastern Air Forces (FEAF), launched
interdiction raids against advancing North Korean units from bases in Japan in an attempt
to slow their headlong rush down the Korean peninsula. Armed reconnaissance by fighters
against targets of opportunity increased their effectiveness.
The United Nations (U.N.) Security Council had called on member nations to aid South
Korea on June 27, but for a time, the U.S. Air Force’s thin aluminum line was the only
help harassed American and Republic of Korean ground forces could expect. B-26s of
the 3d Bombardment Wing from Johnson Air Base in Japan put the interdiction effort on
an around-the-clock basis with night intruder operations beginning on the night of June
27. B-29s of the 19th Bombardment Group, based at Kadena, Okinawa, added heavy
bombs the next day. Continuing interdiction strikes (40 percent of all missions) against
overextended North Korean supply lines and desperate ground action supported by air
strikes (60 percent of all missions) saved U.N. forces trapped in the Pusan Perimeter. This
success in direct support of U.N. troops freed Air Force units for strikes against strategic
targets in North Korea. Accurate bombing in all weather conditions and North Korea’s
small size allowed the B-29s to all but eliminate its industrial base by September 1950.
General Douglas MacArthur, named Commander in Chief of the U.N. Command in
Korea on July 8, launched a surprise amphibious landing at Inchon on September 15,
coupled with a U.N. drive north from the Pusan Perimeter, clearing South Korea of North
Korean forces. In early October the U.N. changed its objective from saving South Korea
to unifying all of Korea under a pro-Westem government. Before the end of the month,
as MacArthur’s army approached the Yalu River separating China from North Korea,
signs pointed to probable Communist Chinese intervention. The Air Force switched to
interdicting the flow of men and materiel across the Yalu bridges. The freezing of the Yalu

River in January 1951, and rules of engagement that forbade American overflights of
Chinese territory on the north end of the bridges, condemned the effort to failure. B-29s
had to fly above 20,000 feet to escape antiaircraft artillery fire from the Chinese side of
the Yalu, but they could not fire back. Bombing became even more difficult when China
escalated the conflict in November 1950 by sending Soviet-provided MiG-15 jet fighters,
launched from safe sanctuary on lightning attacks against American aircraft, especially
FEAF B-29s. The airspace just south of the Yalu River in northwestern Korea became
known as “MiG Alley.” The performance advantages of the MiG-15 in speed and altitude
initially held sway over propeller-driven P-51 Mustangs (pursuit aircraft redesignated by
the Air Force as fighters in June 1948), jet-powered F-80 Shooting Stars, and even newer
F-84 Thunderjets.
Chinese Communist forces counterattacked on November 26, driving U.N. units back
toward South Korea. For the U.S. Air Force, this meant a renewed concentration on
interdiction, combined with a campaign to maintain air superiority against the MiG-15s.
Air Force airlift brought 1,600 tons of supplies to Marines cut off at Changjin (more widely
known by its Japanese name, Chosin) Reservoir and evacuated 5,000 wounded. (Please
reference the “Focus On: Tactical Airlift in the Korean War” article.) After retreating,
U.N. forces stabilized along the 38th parallel in early 1951 and the war deteriorated into a
series of small, bloody battles, with no significant movement by either side. War objectives
changed again. Peace talks opened in July 1951. They were backed by a new American
strategy to force high rates of attrition on the enemy. It would be up to FEAF, now under
Lieutenant General Otto Weyland, and U.S. naval aviation to carry the war beyond the
front, to pressure North Korea and China into a ceasefire, substituting air power whenever
possible for ground operations that inevitably resulted in high casualties.
This strategy presented new threats and complications for the Air Force. Doctrine dictated
strikes against the enemy’s industrial fabric, but the bombing operations of 1950 had
destroyed these limited North Korean targets. Industries supporting the Communist war
effort, located in China and the Soviet Union, were off limits to aerial attack. The Air
Force had to operate under the rules and restrictions of limited war and could not bring
SAC’S massive nuclear power to bear. FEAF B-29 Superfortresses, supported by tactical
aircraft, bombed targets all over North Korea with conventional weapons, including radar-
directed high- altitude strikes against enemy troops forming for attack. They blurred the
lines between tactical and strategic air power, proving the value of George Kenney’s
“seamless” approach.
After China’s intervention, both the United States and the U.N. sought a more limited
objective, that of a negotiated truce. Dissatisfied, MacArthur advised Congress that “there
was no substitute for victory,” and contradicted national policy. On April 11, 1951, President
Truman fired MacArthur, replaced him with Matthew Ridgway, and in the process changed
the nature of air warfare in Korea. The Air Force would still interdict the flow of supplies
to Chinese units along the 38th Parallel and provide close air support to U.N. forces
opposing them, but it would now also pressure the enemy into a settlement by inflicting
maximum losses of men and materiel. The “police action” had become a war of attrition.
78
The Fifth Air Force’s new commander, Lieutenant General Frank Everest, believed that
interdiction was key to reducing the impact of Chinese offensives and U.N. ground losses.
One issue which complicated the air superiority campaign was air bases which the Chinese
tried to build in North Korea to support their own forces and which FEAF was compelled
to target. F-86s engaged MiGs in air-to-air combat and B-29s cratered the air bases’
runways, forcing Communist jets to continue flying out of China and limiting their ability to
challenge because of their short range. However, any bomb damage was quickly repaired
by enemy labor units and necessitated continuous return missions. Interdiction, although
costly, racked up long lists of destroyed trucks, trains, rail lines, and bridges, including the
heavily-defended Yalu crossings. Nonetheless, supplies still reached Communist front
lines in quantity by night. Medal of Honor recipient Captain John Walmsley, Jr., of the 8th
Bombardment Squadron gave his life using his searchlight-equipped B-26 as a beacon to
direct other B-26s while they bombed an enemy supply train on September 14, 1951. As
it had in Operation STRANGLE in Italy during World War II, the Air Force learned that no
air campaign was tougher than interdiction.
By the spring of 1952 the Chinese had won the battle of interdiction and the Americans
had failed in their attrition strategy along the 38th Parallel. Communist representatives,
first at Kaesong and then at Panmunjon, stalled peace talks and demanded mandatory
repatriation for prisoners-of-war. General Weyland proposed to break the impasse by
expanding the air war against North Korea. As U.N. casualties climbed and negotiations
dragged on, the new American commander in Korea, General Mark Clark, accepted
Weyland’s proposal. In June 1952 he ordered the bombing of the Suiho Hydroelectric
Complex, previously “off limits” and one of the largest facilities of its type in the world.
It was a major exporter of electricity to Chinese industries across the border. A four-day
onslaught over Suiho and other hydroelectric plants cost North Korea 90 percent of its
power system. Through the remainder of 1952, the Air Force attacked 78 cities and towns
identified as supportive of a number of military functions, chiefly supply; however, to limit
civilian casualties and weaken morale it alerted their inhabitants.
In Korea, as in World War II, the bombing of critical targets attracted the enemy’s air force
into the sky, where it could be engaged. Intelligence revealed that China had a thousand
MiGs ready for combat and Fifth Air Force fighter squadrons, for the first time in the war,
did not have to go hunting-the “game” came to them. A new version of the F-86, the F
model, gave Air Force pilots superior performance to go along with their better training
and tactics. In May and June 1953 the F-86Fs achieved a 133-to-1 kill ratio in combat
over the MiGs. Individual scores rose, with Air Force Captain Joseph McConnell, a B-24
navigator in World War II, topping all pilots with 16 confirmed victories in only four months.
Three developments in 1953 brought peace to Korea. In March Soviet Premier Joseph
Stalin, a major obstacle, died. In May, Air Force bombers increased the frequency of
their attacks again, striking North Korean irrigation dams that, when breached, washed
away railroads and highways and threatened the nation’s rice crop. At the direction of
President Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Dulles asked Indian Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru to warn China that the United States intended to use tactical and

strategic nuclear weapons and might unleash SAC against Chinese cities if a settlement
was not forthcoming. On May 27, 1953, China agreed to an armistice in Korea. It went
into effect on July 27.
The Korean War should have taught the United States that nuclear weapons had limited
use in conventional wars, but the appeal of the new hydrogen bomb, first tested in
November 1952, and plans for a new all-jet intercontinental bomber, the B-52, continued
to dominate strategic thinking. TAC sought a new generation of fighters (the “century
series,” including the F-100 Super Sabre, F-101 Voodoo, F-102 Delta Dagger, F-104
Starfighter, F-105 Thunderchief, and F-106 Delta Dart) with supersonic speeds, but also
adapted them to carry tactical nuclear weapons. The Air Force realized that while turbojet
technology was the future, it alone was no substitute for good training, tactics, and
aggressiveness. Military casualties in Korea of over two million for both sides, including
more than 36,000 dead Americans, belied the judgment that this was a “limited” war-
Americans learned firsthand the costs of war in Asia. Air Force aircraft had dropped
476,000 tons of explosives to achieve a standoff. Korea exposed the Air Force to the
reality of post-World War II warfare, where conventional (non-nuclear) air power would be
used to “influence” an enemy, not to destroy it.
THE “NEW LOOK” AIR FORCE
After Korea, President Eisenhower told the JCS that the next war they planned would be
nuclear. Conventional capabilities paled before hydrogen bombs such as the Mark 17
(a 41,400-pound thermonuclear device). Only the Air Force B-36 Peacemaker and B-52
Stratofortress could carry the weapon. How to defend America against the Soviet Union’s
nuclear threat was the question of the day. Brushfire wars would be addressed when they
arose, but, so the argument went, they should not occur under the threat of American
nuclear retaliation. In January 1954, Secretary of State Dulles unveiled America’s new
defense strategy-the “New Look.” The United States would deter any Soviet attack by
threatening to destroy Soviet cities. Commanded by General Curtis LeMay, SAC would
expand from 19 to 51 wings, armed with a new generation of smaller, but enormously
destructive high-yield thermonuclear weapons. These wings would be placed on constant
alert, based around the world, and eventually augmented by KC-135 turbojet Stratotankers
to extend their aircrafts’ range. In the mid-1950s the major portion of budgetary allocations
to the Air Force went to SAC. This specified command, responsible for intercontinental
nuclear retaliation, had become “an Air Force within an Air Force.”
Besides acquiring such bomber aircraft as the B-52 Stratofortress and B-58 Hustler, the
Air Force pursued missile development to support the “New Look.” Pivotal to missile
development were the efforts of General Bernard A. Schriever. (Please reference the
“Focus On: Leadership, Gen. Bernard A. Schriever” article.) Beginning in 1946,
Project MX-774 investigated the development of a 5,000-mile ballistic missile, however,
the Scientific Advisory Group, formed by General Arnold, cautioned that atomic bombs
were too large for any such delivery system and directed its efforts toward large, unmanned
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cruise missiles like the Snark. Ballistic missile development lagged until the test of the
hydrogen thermonuclear bomb in November 1952 offered prospects of smaller warheads
with greater power. Intensive research began in 1954, accelerating in 1956 when the
DOD assigned the Air Force responsibility for all ground-launched missiles with ranges of
more than 200 miles (later changed to 500 miles). Success with the liquid-propellant Thor
and Jupiter intermediate range ballistic missiles and Atlas and Titan I intercontinental
ballistic missiles which came online in the early 1960’s came in time to carry a whole
new generation of miniature nuclear and thermonuclear warheads. The solid-propellant
Minuteman ICBM series followed, beginning in October 1962, and became the mainstay
of SAC’s missile retaliatory force. The U.S. Air Force was becoming an aerospace force.
Before ICBMs, manned bombers formed the strength behind the “New Look.” Airmen had
argued since World War I that air power was essentially offensive, but they were compelled
to view it as defensive in light of the damage that resulted from the explosion of even
one nuclear weapon. To detect incoming attacks, President Truman approved the Distant
Early Warning (DEW) radar line which, with Canada’s assent, was built across its northern
territory beginning in 1954. To operate the line and coordinate their defensive forces,
both the United States and Canada established on September 12, 1957, the binational
North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). A generation of interceptor aircraft
began service, beginning with the F-89 and F-100, succeeded by the F-102, F-106, and
F-15. For a time anti-air defenses included surface-to-air missiles such as the Nike Ajax
system. The development of several follow-up designs occurred, but none was deployed.
In the early 1960s the Air Force reinforced NORAD with the Ballistic Missile Early Warning
System (BMEWS) and, later, the Perimeter Acquisition Radar Characterization System
(PARCS). An Air Force general officer historically has served as NORAD commander,
which historically operated from a command center inside Cheyenne Mountain near
Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Because of its experience of World War II in Europe, the Air Force expressed little faith in
the ability of America’s defenses to stop a determined air attack, nuclear or otherwise. The
only defense was deterrence, made possible by a protected force of bombers and missiles.
Any strike at the United States would result in immediate, overwhelming retaliation and
a smoking, radioactive wasteland. This “countervalue” strategy targeted cities. Because
accuracy was limited, especially with early model ICBMs, and thermonuclear warheads
were few, the Air Force targeted large, easy-to-hit cities to inflict the greatest possible
damage. A countervalue strategy was at odds with the Air Force’s traditional commitment
to precision bombing, but consistent with Dulles’s doctrine. Reliance on it and massive
retaliation created three problems for the Air Force and the DOD.
The first problem had to do with the increasing vulnerability of manned bombers to
improved enemy ground defenses when airborne and, when not, to a surprise nuclear
first strike. The Air Force’s solution to ground defenses was the production of standoff
weapons (including the Hound Dog and eventually the SRAM short-range attack missile
and ALCM air-launched cruise missile) to keep bombers at a distance from their targets.
“Airborne alert” helped offset the threat of a surprise first strike against the United States.
Beginning in 1957, part of SAC’S bomber force always remained on ready alert, its crews

on standby, poised to take off at a moment’s notice; another was dispersed to satellite
bases around the world, complicating Soviet targeting; while a smaller was actually
airborne. The DOD’s ultimate solution was the Triad, maintaining three primary nuclear
forces, each with special advantages. The first element of the Triad was the manned
bomber, important for its load-carrying and ability to be recalled once launched. ICBMs
formed the second component. They were important for their speed, size, and, eventually,
accuracy. Early ICBMs, the Atlas and Titan I, burned cryogenic liquid propellant and
required extended launch preparations which rendered them vulnerable to a first strike.
In the 1960s later model Titans IIs employed storable propellants and, joined by the solid-
propellant Minuteman, were placed in protective silos and capable of near-instantaneous
launch. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), including the Polaris, Poseidon,
and Trident, comprised the third component of the Triad. Able to roam the world’s oceans,
missile submarines represented the most survivable of the three legs. Although the sub-
launched solid-propellant ballistic missiles at first lacked range and accuracy, technology
soon removed these drawbacks.
The second problem created by a countervalue strategy and massive retaliation had to
do with the control and integration of diverse weapon systems into a single American
war plan. In 1959 President Eisenhower ordered that a single integrated operational plan
(SIOP) be adopted, which required coordination by the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The
need for SIOP became apparent when in the late 1950s an investigation revealed that
the military services had targeted Moscow with no fewer than 170 nuclear bombs and
warheads in case of all-out war.
The third problem had to do with intelligence. America’s first steps into space, the “ultimate
high ground,” were associated with intelligence, surprise attack prevention, and nuclear
war planning. The Air Force also sought to exploit space for communications, navigation,
and weather forecasting.
Chuck Yeager and the XS-1 rocket aircraft, the first to break the sound barrier, began
pushing back the aerospace frontier in 1947, as did other experimental aircraft that flew
over 301,000 acres of desert testing ground in California at Edwards Air Force Base’s Air
Force Flight Test Center. The X-15 rocket airplane flew nearly seven times the speed of
sound and seventy miles high in the mid-1960s---records that still stand for winged aircraft.
In 1957 the Air Force began the Dyna-Soar program, later designated the X-20, to build a
manned space boost glider/aerospace plane. Dyna-Soar was cancelled in 1963 in favor
of a Manned Orbital Laboratory, itself scrapped in 1969 because automated satellites
could perform the same missions. The flights of the X-aircraft, however, provided critical
knowledge for manned space travel and for the special materials used in a new generation
of aircraft, starting with the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft.
Strategic reconnaissance became the primary goal of space exploration. Fears of a
surprise nuclear attack, based largely on the memory of Pearl Harbor, and the secrecy of
events behind the Iron Curtain forced every administration after 1945 to seek information
on the status and disposition of military forces inside the Soviet Union. Initially, U.S. Air
Force and U.S. Navy aircraft were deployed along its vast periphery to take photographs
82
and intercept radio and radar signals. In early 1956 the Air Force launched 448 unmanned
camera-carrying balloons from western Europe propelled eastward by prevailing winds.
Although inherently random in their coverage, 44 were recovered and provided tantalizing
glimpses of some 10 percent of the Soviet Union’s land area. At the direction of President
Eisenhower, the Air Force, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Lockheed
Aircraft Corporation developed the U-2, a single-engine glider aircraft capable of flying
above 70,000 feet and beyond the range of Soviet air defenses. Eisenhower authorized
U-2 overflights across the Soviet Union beginning on July 4, 1956, but, fearing that they
might become a casus belli, he limited their number. Fewer than 25 missions occurred
before a Soviet surface-to-air missile downed a U-2 flown by Francis Powers on May 1,
1960. The resulting diplomatic crisis ended aerial reconnaissance flights over the Soviet
Union. A more capable SR-71 Blackbird was soon available to replace the U-2, but by
then safer, “national technical means” were available for intelligence-gathering.
In part because of the Soviet Union’s success with Sputnik in October 1957, President
Eisenhower in early 1958 established within the DOD the Advanced Research Projects
Agency, accelerating efforts to exploit space for reconnaissance purposes. The Air
Force had begun investigating the use of satellites for this purpose as early as 1946,
beginning actual development in October 1956 with a contract to Lockheed for the WS-
117L (SAMOS) reconnaissance satellite. Dissatisfied with the technical prospects of the
SAMOS, which transmitted images to Earth from space, in February 1958 Eisenhower
approved Project CORONA, A CIA-Air Force effort to put into outer space a spy satellite
capable of ejecting film capsules for retrieval on earth. The first CORONA satellite, known
publicly as Discoverer, went into space on February 28, 1959, atop a modified Air Force
Thor IRBM. After twelve consecutive failures, complete success came with number 14 on
August 18, 1960. It provided analysts with film coverage of more of the Soviet Union than
all of the U-2 flights combined. While politicians continued to highlight the missile gap
this first successful CORONA satellite effectively ended the “missile gap” controversy,
revealing that the Soviet Union possessed fewer IRBMs than the United States. Only
a few SAMOS satellites were launched in the early 1960s. Designed to scan images in
space and broadcast them as radio signals to receivers on the ground, SAMOS failed
to return one usable photograph of the Soviet Union. Before leaving office in 1961,
President Eisenhower established the National Reconnaissance Office to direct all U.S.
reconnaissance efforts, with the Air Force and CIA participating. To provide satellite early
warning of a nuclear attack, the Air Force also developed the Missile Defense Alarm
System (MID AS) and its operational successor, the Defense Support Program (DSP),
that detected missiles within moments of their launch. DSP would later play a key role in
detecting the launch of Iraqi Scuds Missiles during the Gulf War.
After the discontinuance of the space reconnaissance mission, on March 28, 1961,
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara assigned the Air Force responsibility for other
DOD military space operations such as the worldwide Defense Satellite Communications
System I (DSCS I). Twenty-six system satellites were launched from 1966 to 1968.
Beginning in 1972, larger geosynchronous communications satellites reinforced the
original DSCS I, followed in the 1980s by a third generation of DSCS and in the 1990s by
the Military Strategic Tactical and Relay Program (MILSTAR) system. Another key space

flight project was the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) for monitoring
weather conditions around the globe, with information transmitted to the Air Force’s Global
Weather Center at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. The Air Force tracked and identified
space debris produced by space missions through the Space Detection and Tracking
System (SPADATS). The service also held primary responsibility for launching all DOD
satellites at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida (into low inclination equatorial
orbits) and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California (into polar orbits).
President John Kennedy initiated a more activist, interventionist national strategy in 1961,
one that brought profound changes to the overwhelmingly nuclear-strike Air Force. The
Kennedy administration authorized the expansion of the Air Force’s ICBM arsenal to 1,000
Minuteman and 54 Titan IIs, deployed mainly at isolated bases in the north-central United
States. The Navy nuclear component grew to 41 Polaris submarines, while the Army field
forces eventually increased from 12 to 16 divisions and included a counterinsurgency
capability. This expansion was intended to give the President increased flexibility in
ordering a military response to international crises. In the Cuban missile crisis of October
1962, enormous American offensive power forced the Soviet Union to back down and
prompted Secretary of State Dean Rusk to conclude, “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and the
other fellow just blinked.” In addition to the impact of American offensive power, it was
later revealed that the administration agreed to remove weapons from Turkey as part of
the agreement for the Soviets to remove their missiles from Cuba. (Please reference the
“Focus On: Strategic Reconnaissance” article.) While Kennedy had immense nuclear
power at his disposal in confronting the Soviet Union over its nuclear missiles stationed in
Cuba, he had few conventional options. His military choices were an invasion of Cuba, with
no guarantees of success, or an all-out countervalue thermonuclear war. After the crisis,
won through a third alternative, a naval blockade referred to as a “quarantine,” Kennedy
hastened to adopt the “flexible response” as America’s new war-planning doctrine. SIOP-
63 introduced the potential for limited nuclear war, while preserving the possibility of an
all-out countervalue strike.
Even while the SAC-dominated Air Force had eagerly adopted the Eisenhower
administration’s “New Look” structure, it had also maintained forward-based units in
Japan, Korea, Guam, the Philippines, and elsewhere on the Pacific rim. With almost
1,000 aircraft in place, these units came under the command of the Hawaii-headquartered
Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), which replaced FEAF as the air component of the Navy-led
Pacific Command in 1957.
Meanwhile, by 1957 the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) had built up an even larger
forward presence to bolster NATO. With more than 2,000 assigned aircraft of all types
(not including SAC bombers also deployed in theater), USAFE’s network of 32 primary
installations stretched from England to Saudi Arabia. Reflecting NATO’s “sword and
shield” policy, USAFE focused on nuclear strike and air defense roles. By the time of the
Berlin crisis of 1961, the command had shrunk in size, but it was quickly reinforced by the
largest deployment of tactical aircraft since World War II. After the crisis eased, USAFE
began a 20-year effort to improve its conventional capabilities in line with the flexible
response strategy, which NATO officially adopted in 1967.
84
Focus On: Strategic Airlift
INSIDE THE BERLIN AIRLIFT
By Gen. T. Ross Milton, USAF (Ret.) Reprinted by permission

from Air Force Magazine, published by the Air Force Association,
October 1998.
Fifty years later, the Task Force Chief of Staff reflects on Operation Vittles.
The spring of 1948 began quietly enough. New cars were once again in the showrooms,
a chaotic demobilization had ended, and the main excitement ahead, it appeared, would
be the presidential election. On June 24, the Republican Party confidently nominated
Thomas E. Dewey for the White House. The Democrats, having failed to attract Dwight
D. Eisenhower, resigned themselves to Harry S. Truman and defeat.
That same day, Soviet forces had halted all surface traffic into Berlin, citing “technical
difficulties.” They also shut down electricity for the Allied sectors in the German city. Allied
currency reform provided the proximate cause for this new Soviet provocation, but it was
plain that dictator Joseph Stalin intended to end the curious status of Berlin, which had
become a Western outpost deep inside Soviet-controlled territory.
Gen. Lucius D. Clay, commander of US forces in occupied Germany and Europe and a
steadfast figure if there ever was one, announced that no Soviet action short of war would
force the Americans out of Berlin. The question was how to make good on that promise,
for the Western sectors of the city had a total of less than two weeks of critical supplies,
and the small American force in Germany could not have put down the mighty Red Army.
Some farsighted fellow at the Potsdam Conference had inserted a provision for three air
corridors into Berlin, and Clay now asked Lt. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, the commander of
US Air Forces in Europe, to exploit them with an emergency airlift. Looking around for
someone to do just that, LeMay tagged Brig. Gen. Joseph Smith, Wiesbaden (Germany)
Military Post commander. As he assembled this ad hoc operation with about 100 C-47
“Gooney Birds” left over from Sicily and Arnhem and pilots pulled away from their desks
and other duties, a distinct chill settled over occupied Germany.
Life up to that point had been relatively pleasant for the Western occupying forces, with
nice old houses requisitioned as family quarters and cheap cigarettes, coffee, and other
items widely, if unofficially, used as currency. A few cigarettes could get your laundry
done, a carton or so might fetch a hunting rifle or even a piano. Cigarettes were far too
valuable for the occupied, the Germans, to smoke until, that is, they reached the farmers.
They, having life’s necessities, smoked them.

No Compromise
British officials agreed with Clay’s uncompromising stand and had, in fact, been a little
ahead on preparations for an airlift. The other concerned ally, France, initially distanced
itself from this challenge but only briefly. France, preoccupied with its struggle in Indochina,
had almost nothing in the way of air transport available in Europe. They would make a
significant contribution later on, however.
The West’s improbable answer to the hostile Soviet action got under way June 26. On
July 4, with a maximum effort, US airlifters delivered 675 tons. It was clearly an all-out
performance, one that could not be continued for long. An assortment of Dakotas (British
C-47s) and converted bombers were delivering a similar amount. Since Berlin required a
minimum of 2,500 tons of food per day to sustain the lives of the two million inhabitants in
the Allied sectors, any serious long-term effort would require some major commitments.
One of the few persons on earth who truly believed air transport could solve this problem
was Maj. Gen. William H. Tunner, and he was chafing to get involved. There was no
similar enthusiasm to be found within the Air Staff. Any major diversion of air transport to
Berlin would have a serious effect on combat capabilities, and there was a general view
that this blockade might very well lead to war.
Tunner left on an inspection swing around Military Air Transport Service bases, leaving
me with instructions to haunt the Pentagon and find out what was going on. He called
each night, and he was not happy with my news, for there appeared to be no sentiment
for a major effort and no mention of Tunner going over to run it.
Tunner had commanded “the Hump” operation from India into China during the last year
of World War II. Army Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, Defense Department director of
plans and operations, remembered this as he surveyed the situation in Europe. He,
seconded by the undersecretary of the Army, William H. Draper Jr., urged that Tunner be
sent without delay to take over the airlift to Berlin.
It was a persuasive recommendation. Tunner was ordered to proceed to Wiesbaden,
along with whomever he needed, and assume command of the airlift under the overall
command of CINCUSAFE. He left almost immediately in a C-54 with his longtime pilot
and friend, Col. Red Forman, at the controls. I was to follow with the people Tunner
decided were needed. We left a few days later with a few secretaries and various staff
officers. Our orders called for 30 days of temporary duty.
No room for us was available in the existing USAFE headquarters building, a rambling
structure in downtown Wiesbaden, so we located some apartments on Taunusstrasse,
facing a small park featuring hot sulfur baths. The Schwartzerbach Hotel, where Tunner
and I lived, was just a block away. The Rose, home for most of the staff, was even closer.
And so, barely adjusted to the local time, we set out to survey the situation.
86
Edge of Exhaustion
Wiesbaden AB, undamaged and with fine permanent structures, was one of two bases that
Smith was using for the Berlin run. The sight that greeted us there was not encouraging. It
was evident that everyone-pilots, supervisors, everyone-was on the edge of exhaustion.
The same was true at RheinMain AB, near Frankfurt. Operation Vittles, as Smith had
dubbed his operation, had been a heroic effort, but the end was clearly in sight, barring
major reinforcements.
Some of these reinforcements, in the form of C-54 troop carrier wings, were already on
the way. However, US authorities had registered no specific requirement. We had made
only tentative calculations.
At about this time, a call came from LeMay’s office, and Tunner sent me over to see
what the general wanted. He wanted to know how many C-54s we would need for the
mission. I told LeMay I would hustle back to airlift headquarters and get right on it. He
had a different idea. LeMay, direct as always, motioned to a chair and table in the corner
of his office and told me to do it there. Maj. Gen. August Kissner, LeMay’s chief of staff,
came in with pencils, paper, and a slide rule, and I was left to my thoughts while LeMay
entertained some foreign visitors.
I scratched away and came up with a total of 225 C-54s, using some planning figures
that I knew to be in Tunner’s mind. Clay was waiting for the answer. LeMay took my work
sheet and placed a call to Berlin, meanwhile giving me a wave of dismissal. I lingered in
the outer office long enough to hear LeMay give Clay not my total, but my subtotal. I didn’t
dare barge back in. Instead, I hurried back to Tunner and told him what had gone on.
He approved the figure of 225 and ordered me back on the run to correct the inaccurate
statement that I had overheard. LeMay then placed a second call to Clay, said something
to the effect that we had made some corrections, and gave Clay the right number. Hanging
up, he said: “Thanks, Milton”-a rare encomium from that taciturn man.
That summer, the C-47s were retired in favor of the augmented force of C-54s, and
Tunner began to eye bases in the British zone, where the distance was a third shorter and
the flat terrain allowed for shorter climbs. British authorities readily agreed to make room
for the more productive C-54s and chose Fassberg, an old Luftwaffe training base on
the Lueneburg Heath. Our initial reactions were favorable. The base had fine permanent
buildings, a gymnasium with an indoor swimming pool, and a visiting officers’ quarters,
complete with a huge armchair, rumored to have been reserved for Hermann Goering, the
Luftwaffe chief and No. 2 Nazi official in Hitler’s Germany.
Fassberg in Danger
The initial results at Fassberg more than justified the move. However, as initial enthusiasm
ran down, real difficulties began to develop. The combination of depressing surroundings,
divided authority, and an impersonal functional organization patterned after the airlines-
one that worked against any sense of unit esprit-proved too much. The operation at
Fassberg began to come apart.

The cure was simple and the results dramatic. The Air Force reorganized the pilots
and mechanics into squadrons and started to make recreational runs to Hamburg and
Copenhagen. The Royal Air Force turned Fassberg over to the US Air Force, with Col.
Theron “Jack” Coulter assuming command. His wife, movie star Constance Bennett,
showed herself as one of the most formidable scroungers in any service. The mess
halls and the barracks were spruced up with new furniture and the latest movies shipped
by USAFE supply services. Fassberg, very nearly a Berlin Airlift disaster, became a
showpiece.
Britain followed up its gift of Fassberg with an offer of another base at Celle, an attractive
town near Hanover. An old fighter base, Celle was without runways or, it seemed, room for
a runway, but the facilities were excellent. The British said not to worry and, dragooning
the locals, gave an insight into how the British Empire came about.
As the summer went on, the airlift began to lose the happy informality of its early days.
One horrendous foul-up over Berlin put an end to the sleepy air traffic control system that
had served Berlin well enough before the blockade. The weather was bad that Friday,
Aug. 13, and Tunner was due in Berlin. He was, in fact, overdue, as his airplane milled
around in the stack with an undetermined number of others. Meanwhile, new arrivals
were en route along the corridors, generating a chaotic condition that infuriated Tunner.
As it turned out, the day was a blessing. Given such an unmistakable warning, the Air Force
moved when it still had time to straighten out the procedures before the bad weather set
in around Berlin. The job was splendidly done by Maj. Sterling Bettinger, who got some
professional air traffic controllers back in uniform before the weather turned really sour.
Tunner’s Rules
Admittedly, the new procedures instituted after that infamous Friday were calculated to
make any air traffic controller’s job easier. Exact airspeeds were specified for climb, cruise,
and letdown. Tunner declared a new rule forbidding second tries at a Berlin landing.
This made for a smooth and continuous circuit, eliminating the need for holding patterns.
These factors, plus the arrival of the new CPS-5 radar, made it in all likelihood the best
ordered air traffic situation in history.
Another edict required all pilots to make their approaches under instrument conditions,
regardless of the weather. The Ground Control Approach teams, given this continual
exercise, became wonderfully proficient. There was a particular final approach controller,
a Sergeant McNulty as I remember, who could make you believe, by gentle corrections
interspersed with compliments, that your rotten job of flying into Tempelhof was one of
aviation’s milestones.
Across town, at Gatow, things were no different except for the accents. There the RAF
was in charge and thus host to the C-54s from Fassberg and Celle. Sometimes the long
nights in the Gatow tower were lightened by some irreverent American radio calls. There
was the anonymous poet who gladdened the British traffic controllers with his inbound
report:
88
Here comes a Yankee
With a blackened soul
Heading for Gatow
With a load of coal.
With the exception of December’s battles against a heavy fog, one that brought back
memories of the Great Fog of 1944 and the Battle of the Ardennes, the airlift became
almost routine. Visitors who came for a look at this famous defiance of Stalin were slightly
disappointed by the orderly and measured way the airplanes came and went through
Berlin.
There was, however, one bit of excitement, and it was provided by the French.
The Allies had constructed a third airfield, located on a former panzer drill ground in the
French sector. The labor force which carried out this project was recruited from the local
populace, and it was made up of a most unlikely mix of women and men, young and old,
most of whom gave no indication of having ever before done manual labor. However, no
group had ever worked harder and with such goodwill. Aggregate for the runways came
from the rubble of air raids, and the heavy machinery, too large for our aircraft, had been
sliced up by acetylene torch at RheinMain, carefully marked, and welded back together at
Tegel. At last, everything was ready for the start of operations, except for one thing. In the
midst of the traffic pattern stood a 200-foot-tall radio tower, one that belonged to Soviet
controlled East Berlin.
British and American diplomats proposed a diplomatic solution to the problem. It called for
the Soviets, in return for compensation, to dismantle the obstructing tower.
French forces thought this notion preposterous. And so, one morning, soon after Tegel
opened for business, Brig. Gen. Jean Ganeval had a platoon of engineers march to the
tower, lay some charges, and blow it flat. Direct action, the French said, is what the
Russians understand. Tegel made a substantial contribution to the airlift and is today, in
its modern form, Berlin’s principal airport.
Early in the airlift, Britain agreed to the concept of a unified command structure with Tunner
commanding and Air Commodore J.W.F. Merer as his deputy. One RAF officer, Group
Capt. Noel Hyde, an unforgettable fellow who had spent four years of the war engineering
escapes from Axis POW camps, came down to represent RAF interests and act as chief
of plans. The rest of our staff remained as before, and there was never a time when there
was any friction between the two Allies. Relations between the temporary duty Airlift Task
Force and USAFE were not quite as congenial after the arrival of LeMay’s successor, Lt.
Gen. John K. Cannon, but it wasn’t important. It was just one of those things.

Still Vivid
Even after the passage of 50 years, it is easy to remember the tension of that period.
Scarcely three years had passed since we had thought of Germany as enemy territory. It
still caused a flinch to lumber across, at vulnerable altitudes, those dangerous places we
remembered so well. Now we had a new adversary with 300,000 troops within a day’s
march of the border separating East and West Germany and nothing to stop them if they
invaded.
Well, almost nothing. The United States did have a monopoly on the atomic bomb and
the means-B-29s-to deliver it. Indeed, early in the crisis, Washington had deployed a
squadron of B-29s to the UK, without fanfare. Even so, it was evident that Moscow got the
message. Our strategy, as it would be for many years to come, was one of all or nothing
if it came to war.
For reasons that have never been made clear, the Soviet Union made no serious attempt
to sabotage the airlift. Fighters occasionally made passes at the lumbering transports, but
that was it. It would have been simple to jam the GCA frequencies and the navigational
beacons, but it was never done. For want of a better answer, we have to credit the
presence of those American B-29 bombers in the UK.
The Berlin Airlift was the first real event of the Cold War. Many people in high places
thought it was the first event in World War III. It gave credence to the need for the NATO
Alliance and it was reassuring evidence that the United States had a firm ally in Britain.
Berlin, a shattered city in 1948, was an island under siege. Now, it is once more the
elegant capital of a unified Germany. And while there are many things that contributed
to this present happy state in Berlin, the airlift, 50 years ago, was a vital show of Allied
resolution and competence at a very dangerous time.
90
Focus On: Tactical Airlift in the Korean War
VALOR: THE ONLY WAY OUT
By John L. Frisbee, Contributing Editor. Reprinted by permission

from Air Force Magazine, published by the Air Force Association,
November 1997.
When China entered the Korean War in November 1950, several thousand US
troops were entrapped near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. Their rescue was
imperative.
On Sept. 15, 1950, United Nations forces staged a successful landing at Inchon on the
west coast of Korea in a drive to outflank the North Korean army. UN forces then advanced
rapidly into North Korea.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur predicted that North Korea would be defeated and the war
ended by Thanksgiving. He thought there was little likelihood that China would intervene
to save its Communist neighbor.
While UN and South Korean forces were advancing, the Chinese were surreptitiously
moving more than a hundred thousand troops into position west of the Yalu River. It was
one of the most successful clandestine maneuvers of military history. After a few minor
feelers by small numbers of “volunteers,” the Chinese struck in force on Nov. 27.
With virtually no support from air, armor, or artillery, some 120,000 Chinese troops
overwhelmed the 12,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Division and the four Army battalions
numbering about 3,000 men. The human wave attack left thousands of dead Chinese as
the UN forces fought a courageous retreat in subzero weather to the vicinity of Hagaru-ri,
a small village at the south tip of the Chosin Reservoir. There, they were surrounded by
an estimated 70,000 enemy troops. Marines and Navy fighters kept the Chinese at bay.
The Marines and Army gathered their wounded and those suffering severe frostbite, to care
for them as best they could. Encumbered by several hundred incapacitated men, there
was no way out. The only solution was air evacuation. Under fire from the surrounding
hills, the Marines scraped out a 2,500-foot strip from the frozen ground. A dike at the north
end made it a two-way strip with landings to the north and takeoffs to the south.

Maj. Gen. William H. Tunner, commander of the Far East Air Forces Combat Cargo
Command, assigned the perilous task of evacuation to the 21st Troop Carrier Squadron
based at Itazuke, Japan. Eleven of its C-47s, the only available aircraft that could operate
from the primitive strip and carry a respectable load, were moved to K-27 on the east
coast of Korea. They would haul supplies into Hagaru-ri, then fly the wounded back to
K-27 for airlift in C-54s to hospitals in Japan.
Tunner’s C-119s, which could not operate from the strip, dropped additional supplies to
the besieged men. Marine and Navy fighter aircraft provided continuous coverage during
daylight hours.
Operating from the strip called for skilled, experienced crews. The strip was a bowl,
surrounded by mountains. There were no reliable local weather reports, no navigation
aids, and unpredictable braking conditions on the frozen runway. The strip could be used
only during the few hours of daylight. Approach was over enemy occupied mountains and
departure through a narrow valley with hundreds of Chinese snipers concealed in caves.
Most of the C-47s were hit more than once, but none was downed by enemy fire. One
pilot had his elevator cables severed by a lucky shot but, by coordinated use of trim tabs
and throttles, made it safely back to K-27. One C-47 lost was in a takeoff accident in
which there were no serious injuries.
The more or less standard load for evacuation flight was 35 men, compared to 19 or 20
for commercial DC-3s. That standard often was stretched to crowd in a few who otherwise
would have to be left in the cold until another flight arrived. One C-47 mushed off the
runway with 46 aboard.
One of the many hazards faced by crews was poor winter visibility, especially in the early
morning when the strip could be blanketed by smoke and fog. On one morning vertical
visibility was fair but forward visibility near zero.
A pilot circling over the strip announced that he could provide a controlled approach if
anyone wanted to try it. He then directed the approach of a volunteer, telling him when to
turn to final approach, then giving directional corrections on final. It worked until ground
visibility improved.
The evacuation continued for six days, with crews often flying several missions a day to
the point of exhaustion. When the last of the wounded and dead had been flown out, the
tally showed that those 11 C-47 crews of the 21st Troop Carrier Squadron had evacuated
4,608 wounded and 81 dead.
Those totals included some evacuations from Koto-ri, a second strip hacked out to support
the able-bodied who fought their way out on foot when the air evacuation was completed.
In total, the 1st Marine Division had suffered 8,700 casualties. Army losses were even
heavier.
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On their inbound flights, the C-47s had delivered 547,000 pounds of supplies,
supplemented by air drops from C-119s that could not operate from either strip. The
C-119s also parachuted several spans of a bridge to replace one south of Koto-ri that the
Chinese had destroyed. The centerpiece of the evacuation was the 21st TCS, however.
That squadron was one of the first three units of the war to be awarded the Distinguished
Unit Citation for its “conspicuous gallantry and heroism that distinguished it from other
units in the Korean campaign.”

GENERAL BERNARD A. SCHRIEVER
THE MAN WHO BUILT THE MISSILES
By Walter J. Boyne. Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association, October 2000.
Gen. Bernard Schriever not only produced an ICBM force in record time but also
led the way to American dominance in space.
Gen. Bernard A. “Bennie” Schriever, unquestionably one of the most important officers
in Air Force history, ranks alongside the legendary Hap Arnold and Curtis LeMay in
terms of long-term effect upon the service and the nation. Foremost among his many
achievements was the development and acquisition in the 1950s and early 1960s of a
reliable and operational ICBM force. It was a towering accomplishment-one that helped
propel the United States to military dominance in space, as well.
No one doubts Schriever’s pivotal role in these two stupendous achievements. In April
1957, his image appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which called him “America’s
Missileman.” His official USAF biography flatly proclaims that Schriever is “the architect
of the Air Force’s ballistic missile and military space program.”
Schriever himself is quick to point to the critical contributions of other members of his
team, but the fact remains that he was the man in charge. Had the ICBM program failed
or fallen short, Schriever would have been held responsible. The program succeeded
beyond all expectations, however.
That Schriever reached the pinnacle of American aerospace technology is an unlikely but
very American story. Born Sept. 14, 1910, in Bremen, Germany, Bernard Adolph Schriever
was the son of an engineering officer on a German ship line. His mother, Elizabeth, spent
10 years living in the New York area. It was there that she met her future husband. The
couple were married in New Jersey but returned to Germany, settling in Bremerhaven
just as a world war was set to explode. Schriever, now 90, vividly recalls how, as a child,
he would watch the enormous German zeppelins pass overhead on their way to bomb
England.
When the war eventually soured German-American relations, numerous German ships
were interned in New York Harbor-including his father’s. Faced with indefinite separation
from her husband, Elizabeth Schriever managed to get herself and her two young sons
aboard a Dutch freighter bound for New York. It was a very rough voyage. They arrived
in January 1917. About three months later, Washington declared war on Germany and
joined the Allies.
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The Schrievers, marooned in the US, were forced to make the best of it. They journeyed
to Texas, settling in New Braunfels (a town with a large German-speaking population) and
later moving to San Antonio. In fall 1918, after his father died in an industrial accident,
young Bennie and his brother lived in a foster home for eight months until their grandmother
came from Germany to care for them while their mother worked.
Fascination With Aviation

In 1923, Schriever became a naturalized US citizen. He attended Texas A&M, graduating
near the top of the class of 1931, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in field
artillery. Though an artilleryman, Schriever long had been fascinated with aviation, and he
decided to enter flying school at Randolph Field, Tex.
He did so in July 1932, but the move required him to revert from officer status to that of
aviation cadet. Flying came easily to Schriever. When he graduated in June 1933 at Kelly
Field, Tex., he was commissioned as a second lieutenant for the second time. The Army
soon promoted him to first lieutenant and assigned him to March Field, Calif., where he
flew B-4 and B-10 bombers under the command of Lt. Col. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold. Arnold
was impressed with Schriever’s abilities and would later remember the young Texan when
he needed an airman to whom scientists could relate.
Schriever soon became caught up in the Army’s 1934 misadventure in carrying domestic
airmail. He flew ill-equipped Army Air Corps O-38 and B-4 aircraft on the hazardous Salt
Lake City-to-Cheyenne, Wyo., route. Neither aircraft was equipped for instrument flying.
He survived, but many of his colleagues were killed. For Schriever, the “airmail fiasco,” as
it was called, showed the high price a military force and a nation would pay because of
inferior or inadequate technology.
Schriever went on to spend a six-month tour at Hamilton Field, Calif. However, the tight
military budgets of the day forced him to go off active duty and onto the inactive reserve
list.
In the Great Depression, commercial flying billets were scarce, and Schriever in 1935 ran
a Civilian Conservation Corps camp of 200 boys in New Mexico. When that job ended
in October 1936, he was able to return to active status. He was assigned in December
to Panama, where he was stationed at Albrook Field as a P-12 pilot. In August 1937, he
accepted a position as a pilot with Northwest Airlines.
A year later Schriever learned that the Air Corps had 200 regular commissions available.
He passed the exam for regular officer and, on Oct. 1, 1938, was sworn in once again
as a second lieutenant. Schriever served with the 7th Bomb Group at Hamilton Field and
then moved on to test pilot duties at Wright Field, Ohio. He flew almost every type of
Army aircraft, working with Stanley Umstead and some of the finest pilots in the world. He
attended Air Corps Engineering School and graduated in July 1941.

Stuck in Stanford
Schriever gave stellar academic and flying performances while at Wright Field, so much
so that he gained admission to Stanford University’s graduate program-a rare privilege
for a military officer. He was hitting the books in Palo Alto, Calif., when, on Dec. 7, 1941,
Imperial Japanese forces attacked the United States fleet in Pearl Harbor.
Schriever requested immediate assignment to a combat unit. The Air Force denied the
request, ordering him instead to stay in California and finish his graduate work at Stanford.
He did so, earning a master’s degree in mechanical engineering (aeronautical) in June
1942.
Within the month, Schriever joined the 19th Bombardment Group in Australia and quickly
jumped into the shooting war with Japan. The Japanese had transformed Rabaul, on the
northeast end of New Britain Island in the Bismarck Archipelago, into their most important
base. Ferocious opposition by fighters and flak forced the 19th by August 1942 to turn to
night bombing.
The newly minted Major Schriever developed a flare-dispensing system for use in night
attacks and tested it in two raids with an old Hamilton Field comrade, then Maj. Jack
Dougherty, who had survived being shot down over the jungles of Java. They flew in a
formation of about a dozen B-17s in a night raid on Rabaul. Their airplane carried the
flares and half the regular bomb load. The flare system worked well, but Schriever wanted
to check on the bombing results, so they made another circuit over the target area. Flak
was heavy but ineffective at the 10,000-foot altitude from which they were bombing.
As they turned, the No. 3 engine burst into a ball of flames. Dougherty, in the left seat,
feathered the prop and shut the engine down. They still had bombs on board but did not
want to set up another bombing approach. A quick conference on the intercom led to a
decision: They would dive-bomb the ships in the harbor. Schriever laughs ruefully today
at the thought of dive-bombing in a three-engine B-17 from a relatively safe altitude down
into the flak over Rabaul, but they pulled it off, sinking a ship and returning to base.
Kenney’s Command
Schriever flew 38 combat missions in B-17s, B-25s, and C-47s, but his truly important
contribution to the war effort lay in managing the Air Corps engineering effort for Gen.
George C. Kenney, commander of Fifth Air Force and ultimately commanding general of
Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific. When 19th BG was told it was being returned
to the States, Kenney called Schriever in to his office. “I’m not letting you go home,” he
said. “I need as much engineering help as I can get out here.”
Schriever welcomed the news, for the title “engineering officer” also encompassed
supply and what later became known as logistics. It was absolutely vital to the war
effort in the Pacific. He became chief of the Maintenance and Engineering Division, 5th
Air Force Service Command, in January 1943. Thereafter, his duties expanded as the
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war progressed. He became chief of staff, 5th Air Force Service Command, and then
commander of the advance headquarters, Far East Air Service Command, where he was
responsible for maintenance in 5th, 7th, and 13th Air Forces.
His rank rose swiftly as he moved his headquarters from New Guinea to Leyte to Manila
to Okinawa. Promoted to colonel at age 33 in December 1943, he kept in the forefront of
the war, moving his headquarters into the battle zone before the firing ceased, sometimes
landing on the nearest highway. He took over the Manila airport while the shooting was
still going on and landed his C-47 on Naha strip on Okinawa the day the Marines captured
it.
After spending 42 months overseas, Schriever returned home to an assignment in the
Pentagon. The Army Air Forces were in the midst of a precipitous demobilization and
at the same time were fighting for independent status. At the end of his career, ailing
physically and beset with all the problems implicit in his job as Commanding General of
the Army Air Forces, Hap Arnold still had the vision to continue the emphasis on Research
and Development fostered by the Scientific Advisory Group he formed in 1944.
Schriever’s engineering and management skills were by that time well-known in AAF. He
was made chief, Scientific Liaison Section, Deputy Chief of Staff, Materiel. For Schriever, it
was the perfect job, for it gave him the opportunity to mix with the brilliant scientists Arnold
brought on to the Scientific Advisory Board (as it became known when it convened in June
1946). It was in this post that Schriever introduced development planning objectives-a
series of planning documents that linked ongoing R&D efforts with long-range military
requirements.
Over the next 10 years, Schriever became well-regarded for his technical expertise and
willingness to buck senior leadership when he thought it necessary. In one of his less
successful efforts, Schriever opposed the bid by Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, then commander
in chief of Strategic Air Command, to procure the B-52 bomber. Schriever maintained that
USAF could carry out the mission at less cost by using a re-engined B-47. LeMay was
not amused and eventually won out. Despite this dustup, LeMay recognized Schriever’s
value, as did other top leaders such as Gen. Nathan F. Twining and Gen. Thomas D.
White.
Heavyweights All
The degree of Schriever’s effectiveness as a leader can be ascertained by looking at
the high caliber of the men who became his closest associates in what would become
his most important technological effort-the creation of a reliable Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile. Numbered among them were such luminaries as Trevor Gardner, Simon Ramo,
and John von Neumann, all heavyweight scientists and technologists. These were all men
of the highest intellect, leaders in their field, and capable administrators. They recognized
Schriever as one of their own, a distinction not bestowed lightly to anyone and even more
rarely to a military officer. They regarded Schriever as “born for the job.”

The importance of the ICBM had been clear ever since the existence of the first German
V-2 rocket was made known to the world. However, actually fielding an ICBM was difficult
for political and technical reasons. The services engaged in a fierce rivalry for control over
missile programs in general and any potential ICBM programs in particular. Divisions also
opened in the ranks of the Air Force itself. Most of its leaders were bomber veterans who
did not find it easy to assign priority to a new type of weapon system.
The first problem was resolved for the most part when Washington granted USAF the
charter to develop both the ICBM and intermediate-range ballistic missile. The second
problem was not completely resolved for many years.
The technical difficulties proved to be far more serious. Nobody had ever built an
intercontinental-range missile. Problems were major and totally new, comprising missile
guidance, en route navigation, warhead re-entry, and provision of rocket engines large
enough to lift projected gross weights of 440,000 pounds.
Committees have a bad reputation, but it was a series of committees that guided the Air
Force in its selection of people and methods to produce the ICBM. The Teapot, Killian, and
Gillette committees were almost entirely composed of the brightest leaders in academia,
industry, and the military. Schriever, who was either a member or advisor to each panel,
usually managed to push them in a direction that produced the results he needed.
Although an early advocate of missiles, Schriever, now a brigadier general, was well
aware of the technical difficulties involved. He was attending a briefing of the Scientific
Advisory Board at Patrick AFB, Fla., in 1953 when von Neumann and Edward Teller gave
independent presentations indicating the practical possibility of building a nuclear bomb
weighing no more than 1,500 pounds.
Schriever recalls, “I almost came out of my seat in excitement, realizing what this meant
for the ICBM.”
The breakthrough solved one of Schriever’s most pressing problems-the weight of the
nuclear warhead. The proposed ICBM-the Atlas-could now weigh in at as “little” as 220,000
pounds. The weight difference was enormous. It reduced the rocket-engine challenge to
manageable proportions. Almost equally important, Teller and von Neumann estimated
that the 1,500-pound bomb would yield explosive power of one megaton of TNT, greatly
easing the ICBM’s accuracy requirements.
The very limited yields of previously designed warheads generated the requirement
for extreme accuracy; the ICBM guidance system would have to produce a Circular
Error Probable of about 1,500 feet. With the one-megaton yield, however, accuracy
requirements could be relaxed to a CEP of two to three nautical miles. In consultation
with others, Schriever increased the estimate of the warhead weight to 3,000 pounds, just
to be conservative.
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Into Overdrive
Things began to move rapidly. In May 1954, then Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Thomas White
assigned the Air Force’s highest priority to the Atlas. In July, Schriever, Gardner, and von
Neumann briefed the Atlas program to President Eisenhower, convincing him to give
top national priority to the development of the ICBM. On Aug. 2, Schriever officially took
command of the newly created Western Development Division, which had its quarters
in a former schoolhouse on Manchester Avenue in Inglewood, Calif. Schriever had the
privilege and the luxury of picking his top staff and most of the original party. They were
a talented crew.
The project was backed by Secretary of the Air Force Harold E. Talbott, whose deputy
for budget and program management, Hyde Gillette, created (with Schriever’s guidance)
a streamlined set of procedures that made WDD solely responsible for planning,
programming, and developing the ICBM. The stage was set.
In size and funding, WDD’s ICBM effort dwarfed that of Manhattan Project. It also faced
a different kind of challenge. The Soviet Union had already demonstrated its scientific
prowess by producing nuclear and thermonuclear bombs. It was producing new, highly
capable bombers even as it mounted an aggressive rocket technology program (which,
in fact, led to the shock of Sputnik and then a workable ICBM). Schriever and his team
could not afford to fail.
The successful October 1957 launch and orbit of Sputnik dealt a blow to US pride and
morale. Ironically, however, it was a piece of incredibly good fortune for Schriever and his
team. For years, the Eisenhower Administration had been cutting back severely on R&D
and defense spending. At a stroke, Sputnik ended the cutbacks and ushered in a period
of rich funding for the American ICBM program.
Schriever’s nominal task was to create an ICBM. His actual task was to create an
organization that managed all the elements of the high-technology endeavor while, at the
same time, coming up with practical means for using the ICBM. This included planning
and building the complex facilities for production and testing. The missile systems,
themselves infinitely complex and almost bereft of computer power at the time, had to
be integrated with the nuclear warhead. To prove that a nuclear warhead could re-enter
the atmosphere without self-destructing, Lockheed opened a secondary program, the
X-17, to test experimental nose cones. The Air Force needed new launch sites, meaning
land had to be acquired and designated for use, and facilities planned and built, and the
operating personnel trained. All this had to be done before the Soviets did it.
Schriever contends that the program succeeded in large measure because the Eisenhower
Administration backed it fully and because he chose a risky path of development. With
his top aides, Schriever created a system based on technical feasibility and concurrency-
conducting simultaneously certain development tasks that normally would be conducted
sequentially. It was a revolutionary change in management and administration of a military
program.

Schriever also demanded, and got, from the Administration:
Clear and vertical decision-making channels on overall program and policy matters.
Assignment of priority high enough to ensure adequate funds.
Complete responsibility and authority for program direction at the operating management
level.
Competent, highly motivated personnel at all levels.
In short order, Schriever was calling on the talents of 18,000 scientists, 17 prime
contractors, 200 subcontractors, and 3,500 suppliers, employing about 70,000 people.
By June 1, 1957, the WDD had become the Ballistic Missile Division. More than 8,000
individual reporting channels fed back to the master control room at Schriever’s BMD.
Today, Schriever says he did not attempt to understand all of the technology involved,
because it was too much for any one person to assimilate. However, he did understand
the needs of the managers he put in charge, and he understood whether they were
obtaining the results he wanted.
Colleagues from the time recall Schriever as being a workhorse, putting in 16-hour days
and shuttling around the country to put out-or start-fires. He was known to be tough but
fair. He was easy to get along with if you were producing. If not, you could expect to be
gone in short order.
When success came, it was on an extraordinary scale. The first Atlas was launched by a
Strategic Air Command crew from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on Sept. 9, 1959. Deployment
went ahead at a feverish pace, despite the requirement to put a large part of the Atlas
force in huge underground silos as protection against Soviet ICBM attack. By 1963,
SAC had 13 Atlas missile squadrons, with 127 missiles deployed, sufficient to meet the
contemporary Soviet threat.
Tale of Four Missiles

This was but one of Schriever’s accomplishments. While the Atlas was being conceived,
engineered, produced, and developed, he had simultaneously supervised creation of the
Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile, which went from contract award in December
1955 to Initial Operational Capability in June 1959-in other words, in less than four years.
The far more sophisticated Titan ICBM reached its IOC in April 1962. Most amazing of
all, an entirely new concept in ICBMs, the solid-fuel Minuteman, achieved its IOC in
December 1962, rendering obsolete all but the Titan II missiles.
In just eight years, Schriever and his brilliant organization had created a missile industry
able to provide the US Air Force with four complete missile systems of almost unimaginable
complexity and capability. By comparison, it took 10 years to take the contemporary F-102
fighter from concept to completion.
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American dominance in space came about in part as a by-product of Schriever’s
development of missile technologies. In February 1957, he had announced that about 90
percent of the developments in the ballistic missile program could be used to establish
a USAF presence in space. However, even Schriever himself would not have predicted
that, four decades later, the Atlas design would still be used as a satellite launcher.
Though Schriever’s hardware was useful and long-lived, his revolutionary management
changes were even more important for the space program. Today’s navigational,
meteorological, intelligence, and communication satellites owe their existence to the work
of Schriever and his team.
As his successes mounted, Schriever exerted greater and greater influence on USAF’s
structure and organization. He became commander of Air Research and Development
Command in 1959. Two years later, he was promoted and given command of a new
organization he had long advocated-Air Force Systems Command. As a four-star general
at AFSC, he was able to apply his management rigor to the acquisition of all USAF
weapon systems. He insisted on technologically superior performance standards for new
weapon systems. At the same time, he demanded that they be produced under tough
cost controls to meet the pre-established production schedules.
By 1963, Schriever was overseeing about 40 percent of the Air Force’s budget, with
AFSC employing 27,000 military and 37,000 civilian personnel.
In that same year, he directed Project Forecast, a visionary look into the future of technology
that helped chart the nation’s journey to superpower status. It identified key areas that would
lead to great improvements in air and space weapons, including computers, advanced
composite materials, radical new propulsion systems, and a prodigious expansion in the
use of satellites.
Schriever retired as a four-star general in 1966 after 33 years of Air Force service. In
retirement, he immediately started a busy second career, serving as chairman of the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the Defense Science Board, the Ballistic
Missile Defense Organization Advisory Committee, and many more defense-related
organizations. His advice is still sought by research organizations and government
agencies.
When it comes to technology, Schriever still has strong opinions on what remains to be
done. “We are now in a period of history where global engagement with the enemy is right
at our fingertips,” he asserts. “We can defeat the enemy in his own backyard at the speed
of light.” It is a bold and penetrating prediction, just the sort of thing you’d expect from the
man who built the missiles.

Focus On: Strategic Reconnaissance
AIRPOWER AND THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
By John T. Correll. Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association, August 2005.
In the summer of 1962, a conspicuous military buildup was under way in Cuba. US aerial
surveillance in July reported an exceptional number of Soviet ships moving toward the
island. They rode high in the water, suggesting military cargo—such as missiles, which
occupied considerable space in relation to their weight.
In August, US intelligence received reports of sightings by ground observers of Russian-
built MiG-21 fighters and Il-28 light bombers.
CIA U-2 spyplanes overflew Cuba twice a month. On Aug. 29, they found SA-2 surface-
to-air missile sites at eight different locations. That was of interest but of no great concern.
SAMs were defensive weapons.
The U-2s also found MiG-21s, confirming the earlier sighting reports. Possibly, though,
these aircraft were simply upgrades from the older MiGs the Cubans already possessed.
CIA director John A. McCone was suspicious. In an Aug. 10 memo to President Kennedy,
he guessed that Russia was about to introduce ballistic missiles into Cuba.
Why, he asked, would they be deploying SAMs, except to protect something important,
like offensive missile sites?
For Kennedy, the question had political as well as military implications.
In late August, Sen. Kenneth B. Keating (R-N.Y.)—whose sources were probably Cuban
exiles in Florida—said there was evidence of Soviet “rocket installations” in Cuba and
urged Kennedy to act. Others, notably Sen. Homer E. Capehart (R-Ind.), joined in the call
for action.
Strangely, U-2 flights ceased for more than a month, from Sept. 5 to Oct. 14. One reason
was bad weather, but another was anxiety on part of the President’s advisors, who worried
about the consequences of a U-2 shootdown.
To the dismay of the CIA, the Air Force took over the U-2 missions when they resumed.
The first flight was by Maj. Richard S. Heyser on Oct. 14.
When CIA analysts on the next day pored over Heyser’s reconnaissance film, they found
SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles. Senior Administration officials were told that night.
The President was notified early on the morning of Oct. 16.
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The Cuban missile crisis had begun. By the time the public was informed one week later,
the U-2s had also discovered an SS-5 intermediate-range ballistic missile site and Il-28
bombers.
President Kennedy spoke to the nation on television Oct. 22 and announced “unmistakable
evidence” of Russian missiles in Cuba. He declared a naval “quarantine” and said any
missile fired from Cuba would be treated as a Soviet attack on America.
On Oct. 27, a Russian SAM crew shot down a U-2, killing the pilot, Air Force Maj. Rudolf
Anderson Jr. The White House decided not to retaliate.
On Oct. 28, the Russians bowed to overwhelming US strategic power and agreed to
withdraw their missiles.
It was as close as the Cold War ever came to World War III.
Khrushchev’s Gambit
As Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told it later, the crisis began the previous April.
“It was during my visit to Bulgaria that I had the idea of installing missiles with nuclear
warheads in Cuba without letting the United States find out they were there until it was too
late to do anything about them,” he said in Khrushchev Remembers, published in 1970.
He was reacting, superficially at least, to the Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles
the United States had recently installed in Turkey. More important, though, Khrushchev
wanted to compensate for Russia’s strategic disadvantage in long-range missiles.
“In addition to protecting Cuba,” he acknowledged in his memoirs, “our missiles would
have equalized what the West likes to call ‘the balance of power.’ ”
Protecting Cuba had little to do with it. Khrushchev saw the possibility of an instant strategic
adjustment. IRBMs based in Cuba could reach US targets as easily—and faster—as
ICBMs from launch sites in the Soviet Union.
Missiles had recently taken center stage in the Cold War. Ironically, one of Kennedy’s
issues in the 1960 election was an alleged “missile gap,” with the Russians ahead. There
was indeed a missile gap, but it was in favor of the United States.
The Russians had only four ICBMs in 1961. By the time of the Cuban missile crisis, they
probably had several dozen, although some estimates went as high as 75. What the
Russians did have was medium-range ballistic missiles, about 700 of them.
The United States had 170 ICBMs, and the number was rising rapidly. It also had
eight ballistic missile submarines with 128 Polaris missiles. To make matters worse for
Khrushchev, the Soviet missiles were of inferior quality.

Khrushchev had added to the perception of a missile gap by his loud and untruthful
boasting that the USSR was turning out missiles “like sausages” and his claims of long-
range missile capabilities he was nowhere close to having.
The US Air Force had deployed Thor and Jupiter intermediate-range missiles to Europe
as a direct counter to Soviet MRBMs and IRBMs. The Jupiters had been operational in
Turkey since April 1962.
Fidel Castro agreed readily to accept the Soviet missiles in his country. He did not see a
need for them for Cuba’s defense, but he was eager to be part of the communist team,
the point man in the Western Hemisphere.
The ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 had failed to oust Castro, but he remained on
Washington’s hit list. “Operation Mongoose,” a scheme to undercut the Castro regime,
was still running.
Castro welcomed the installation of the Russian missiles as an opportunity to stick it to
the Yanquis.
A survey team, led by Marshal Sergei Biryuzov, chief of the Soviet Rocket Forces, visited
Cuba prior to the deployments. Upon his return, Biryuzov assured Khrushchev that the
missiles would be concealed and camouflaged by the palm trees.
Khrushchev believed him.
The force proposed for Cuba included 24 MRBM launchers and 16 IRBM launchers.
There were two missiles (one as a spare) and one nuclear warhead for each launcher.
There would also be four combat regiments, 24 SA-2 batteries, 42 MiG-21 interceptors,
and 42 Il-28 bombers.
The ships began moving from the Black Sea in the middle of July. The first MRBMs
arrived at the Cuban port of Mariel aboard Poltava on Sept. 15.
“Soon, hell will break loose,” Khrushchev told an aide at the end of September.
The U-2
The state of the art in aerial photo intelligence was the Lockheed U-2.
Reconnaissance satellites were coming along, but the technology was not yet fully mature.
The U-2 was developed in the 1950s by the fabled Lockheed Skunk Works under the
direction of the equally fabled Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson. The prime customer was the
CIA, but the Air Force was also offered a share of the program.
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At first, according to a declassified CIA history of the U-2, Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, commander
in chief of Strategic Air Command, said that “if he wanted high-altitude photographs, he
would put cameras in his B-36 bombers and added that he was not interested in a plane
that had no wheels or guns.”
The Air Force bought some U-2s anyway. They were assigned to SAC’s 4080th Bomb
Wing at Laughlin Air Force Base, near Del Rio, Tex. The aircraft began arriving in June
1957. Mostly, the Air Force U-2 pilots flew missions around the Soviet periphery and in
the Far East.
The U-2 was built to go high and far. The wingspan was 80 feet, almost twice the length
of the body of the aircraft, which was not quite 50 feet. It flew at 72,500 feet, more than
13 miles high.
To get range, altitude, and endurance, the Skunk Works had traded off everything else.
The U-2 was not very fast. Cruise speed was 460 mph.
“One unusual design feature was the tail assembly, which—to save weight—was attached
to the main body with just three tension bolts,” the CIA history said. “The wings were also
unique. Unlike conventional aircraft, whose main wing spar passes through the fuselage
to give the wings continuity and strength, the U-2 had two separate wing panels, which
were attached to the fuselage sides with tension bolts.
“The fragility of the wings and tail section, which were only bolted to the fuselage, forced
Kelly Johnson to look for a way to protect the aircraft from gusts of wind at altitudes below
35,000 feet, which otherwise might cause the aircraft to disintegrate.
... The U-2 remained a very fragile aircraft that required great skill and concentration from
its pilots.”
Flying the U-2 at altitude also demanded precision.
“The air was so thin it could barely support the weight of the plane, and the difference
between maximum and minimum speeds was a scant six knots (seven mph),” a Washington
Post reporter wrote after interviewing Air Force pilot Heyser.
“If he flew too fast, the fragile [aircraft] would fall apart. If he flew too slow, the engine
would stall, and he would nose-dive.”
At the end of each wing of the U-2 was a “pogo,” an outrigger with a wheel on it, to keep
the wingtips from dragging on takeoff. When the aircraft broke ground, the pogos dropped
away. The wingtips had skids for landing.

USAF Takes the Flights
The U-2 cameras carried 5,000 feet of film. Had it all been spooled on the same side of
the camera, the weight of the film—about 300 pounds—would have thrown the airplane
out of balance. Thus the film was divided into two strips, each nine inches wide, feeding
from opposite directions. It would be recombined in the laboratory to produce images 18
inches square.
Each U-2 mission took about 4,000 pictures.
The U-2’s free run of crossing Soviet territory came to an end on May 1, 1960, when CIA
pilot Francis Gary Powers, flying out of Pakistan, was shot down over Sverdlovsk by a
Russian SA-2 SAM and captured.
There was great political uproar, both in the United States and abroad. President
Eisenhower, who had detailed knowledge of the overflights and who approved the
missions, denied his involvement and canceled the overflights of Russia.
The CIA U-2s continued to fly other reconnaissance missions, including the semimonthly
passes over Cuba in the summer of 1962. At that point, two events, neither of them the
doing of the CIA, intervened.
On Aug. 30, a SAC U-2 on a mission unrelated to Cuba overflew Sakhalin Island in
the Far East by mistake. The Soviets protested and the US apologized. On Sept. 9, a
Taiwanese U-2 was lost, probably to a SAM, over western China. Taiwan had bought its
own U-2s from Lockheed.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy became
concerned that one of the SAMs in Cuba might shoot down a U-2, setting off an international
controversy. So—just as the missile shipments were approaching port in Cuba—the U-2
missions stopped. There were no overflights from Sept. 5 to Oct. 14, although the CIA
was allowed to fly peripheral runs, taking pictures from slant range, 15 miles offshore.
On Sept. 28, Navy reconnaissance aircraft photographed large crates on the deck of the
Soviet ship Kasimov, on its way to Cuba. The size and shape of the crates indicated that
they contained Il-28 light bombers, which was later confirmed.
On Oct. 12, the Administration transferred responsibility for U-2 overflights of Cuba to the
Air Force. Various reasons were given, but the real explanation was that the Administration
did not want another CIA U-2 flap and believed that it would be easier to concoct a cover
story if the missions over Cuba were flown by the Air Force.
There is also some indication that the Department of Defense and the Air Force pressed
hard to get the mission. McCone was away when it happened.
According to the CIA history, “The acting DCI [director of central intelligence], Lt. Gen.
Marshall S. Carter, US Army, reacted strongly to the Air Force takeover of a major CIA
operation. At one point, he remarked, ‘I think it’s a hell of a way to run a railroad. It’s
perfectly obviously a geared operation to get SAC in the act.’ ”
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Dino A. Brugioni, whose book Eyeball to Eyeball is a detailed remembrance from inside
the CIA, said Carter was surprised to learn that McCone had previously mentioned to the
President “that the U-2 missions were getting progressively hazardous and he might want
to consider a transfer of the responsibilities to the military.”
No matter how Carter and the CIA felt about it, the Air Force had the job, and the missions
would be flown in the best models of the U-2, which the CIA had and the Air Force didn’t.
In 1962, the most experienced pilots at Laughlin were Heyser, of Apalachicola, Fla., and
Anderson, of Greenville, S.C. They went to Edwards AFB, Calif., for familiarization in the
U-2Cs and to bring back two of them, which the Air Force was borrowing from the CIA.
The U-2C could fly 5,000 feet higher than the Air Force’s U-2As.
Finding Missile Sites

It is sometimes reported that Anderson flew the first Air Force mission over Cuba, the
one that found the missiles, or that he and Heyser both flew that day. That was a public
relations maneuver instigated by the Pentagon after Anderson was shot down.
The fact is, Heyser flew the first mission alone, from Edwards. Anderson was the backup.
Heyser took off from California in the middle of the night on a schedule that would put him
over Cuba an hour after sunrise on Sunday, Oct. 14.
It took five hours for him to reach the Gulf of Mexico. He swung wide around the western
end of Cuba and approached the island from the south. He crossed the Isle of Pines at
7:31 a.m. and turned on the cameras.
Heyser flew north, across San Cristobal, west of Havana. San Julian airfield was off to
his left. He exited Cuban airspace at 7:43 a.m. He landed at McCoy Air Force Base at
Orlando, Fla., where an airplane was waiting to take the film to Washington, D.C. At the
debriefing, Heyser described the mission as “a milk run.”
The film was delivered to the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center.
Analysis on Oct. 15 revealed components of SS-4 missile batteries at San Cristobal and Il-
28 bombers at San Julian. No nuclear warheads were seen. That evening, Administration
officials were tracked down and notified.
President Kennedy was informed at 8:45 a.m. on Oct. 16. On his orders, the Air Force
U-2s began flying as many as six missions a day over Cuba. “ExCom,” an executive
committee of the National Security Council, was formed to work the crisis.
On Oct. 17, the U-2s found an SS-5 IRBM site (the first of three to be identified).

The range of the SS-5 was 2,531 miles, double that of the SS-4. It could reach any point
in the United States except for the Pacific Northwest. (Although the sites were under
construction, no SS-5s reached Cuba. They were on ships that turned back.)
By Oct. 19, US intelligence had discovered 16 operational SS-4 launchers, 22 Il-28
bombers, 24 SA-2 SAM sites, and a nuclear warhead storage bunker.
In his memoirs, Khrushchev blustered, “We hadn’t had time to deliver all our shipments to
Cuba, but we had installed enough missiles already to destroy New York, Chicago, and
the other huge industrial cities, not to mention the little village of Washington.”
Some Administration advisors agonized that Cuba was within its rights as a sovereign
nation in permitting an ally to install nuclear missiles. Kennedy understood, however, that
a nuclear missile threat 90 miles off the Florida coast could not be tolerated.
Showdown
The public learned of the crisis when President Kennedy spoke to the nation on television.
He said that the United States would “regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba
against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the
United States, requiring a full retaliatory response against the Soviet Union.”
He also announced a naval “quarantine” of Cuba, avoiding the term “blockade,” which is
an act of war. The Organization of American States supported the quarantine.
For the first time in history, Strategic Air Command went to DEFCON 2, one step short
of general war. Up to a third of the B-52s were on airborne alert, and the rest of the
fleet was ready to take off in 15 minutes. The North American Air Defense Command
moved fighter-interceptors and Hawk and Nike Hercules anti-aircraft battalions to the
southeastern United States.
While the U-2s continued to work at high altitude, other Air Force and Navy aircraft flew
photo missions over Cuba at lower altitudes. The Air Force RF-101 used six cameras that
could photograph the missile sites from treetop level.
There was some talk of a “surgical strike” to take the missiles out, but with the capabilities
and bombing accuracies of the day, that was not to be. The Air Force told the President
that it would take hundreds of sorties to be sure of getting 90 percent of the missiles.
That was a no go.
Meanwhile, Castro—who had been steadily ignored by both the Russians and the
Americans—was growing impatient. He had anti-aircraft guns of his own scattered around
the island, and he ordered the Cuban gunners to shoot down the American airplanes. The
Soviet ambassador tried to persuade Castro to cancel his order, but he refused.
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That was the situation on the morning of Oct. 27, when Anderson took off from McCoy
Air Force Base in a U-2. He crossed the northern coastline of Cuba at 9:15 a.m., flew
south, over Guantanamo Bay, and then back northward. The SAM site at Banes, on the
northeastern coast, picked him up about 10 a.m.
The Cuban gunners couldn’t reach Anderson at the altitude he was flying, so the Soviet
SAM crewmen at Banes decided they ought to help their allies. The overall Soviet
commander, Gen. Issa Pliyev, could not be found at that critical moment. The SAM battery
fired three rockets, two of which hit Anderson’s U-2 and knocked it out of the sky.
There were mild reprimands from Moscow and orders not to shoot down any more U-2s.
Khrushchev lied about it, of course. “Castro gave an order to open fire, and the Cubans
shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane,” he said in his memoirs.
ExCom had decided earlier that if a U-2 were shot down, the SAM site would be attacked
and destroyed. Accordingly, the Air Force prepared an F-100 strike on Banes, but President
Kennedy would not allow it.
A week after the shootdown, the Cubans turned over Anderson’s body to a United Nations
representative. Kennedy personally ordered the Air Force to award posthumously to
Anderson the Air Force Cross—the first ever presented.
End Game
On Oct. 27, the same day Anderson was shot down, the Air Force put its first 10 Minuteman
I missiles on alert at Malmstrom AFB, Mont. It was another reminder to Khrushchev that
he was years away from achieving strategic parity with the United States, and he knew it.
“We could see that we had to reorient our position swiftly,” he said in Khrushchev
Remembers, claiming fear that Kennedy would not be able to control the warlike US
military leaders. He notified Kennedy, “We agree to remove our missiles and bombers on
the condition that the President give us his assurance that there would be no invasion of
Cuba.”
Khrushchev pulled back from the confrontation in a Radio Moscow broadcast Oct. 28,
declaring that he had ordered “the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as
‘offensive,’ and their crating, and return to the Soviet Union.”
“Eyeball to eyeball, they blinked first,” Secretary of State Dean Rusk told a reporter.
That was so, but the United States also made a concession, which was not announced.
The Jupiter missiles would be pulled out of Turkey.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy told Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, back-
channel, that “within a short time after this crisis was over, those missiles would be gone.”
It was no great loss to the United States or NATO. The Jupiters were obsolete, and the
mission they were performing was taken over by Polaris nuclear submarines.

Photoreconnaissance on Nov. 1 confirmed that the MRBM sites had been bulldozed.
Ships began taking missiles and other equipment back to the Soviet Union on Nov. 5.
SAC went back to its normal alert posture on Nov. 20, and the naval quarantine ended.
Khrushchev was removed from power in 1964. The reasons were mostly domestic, but
the Cuban missile fiasco had cost him support.
Years later, it was revealed that, in addition to the missiles, there had been 40,000 Soviet
troops in Cuba, many more than the US had estimated. There were also about 20 nuclear
warheads in Cuba, although none of them had been mounted on the missiles.
On Nov. 26, at Homestead AFB, Fla., Kennedy presented the
He also visited and thanked Navy fliers at Key West, Fla.
“I may say, gentlemen, that you take excellent pictures and I have seen a good many of
them, beginning with the photographs which were taken on the weekend in the middle of
October which gave us the conclusive proof of the buildup of offensive weapons in Cuba,”
Kennedy said to the U-2 crews.
“The 4080th contributed as much to the security of the United States as any unit in our
history and any group of men in our history.”
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Airpower through the Cold War, Part II

• Comprehend the impact airpower and other key events had on the
USAF and US policy during the Cold War.
• Explain the significance of the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
• Describe how airpower was used in Southeast Asia.
• Describe Rolling Thunder, Linebacker I, and Linebacker II bombing
campaigns.
• Summarize the uses and effectiveness of the B-52 in the Vietnam War.
• Give examples of tactical airlift missions flown during the Vietnam War.
• Describe the US Air Force’s search and recovery mission in Vietnam.
• Summarize the lessons learned from the Vietnam War.
• Identify missile and aircraft systems developed after the Vietnam War.
• Identify missile and aircraft systems developed after the Vietnam War.
• State the U.S. objectives from operation URGENT FURY.
• Identify the key Air Force Function that was a difference-maker in
operation EL DORADO CANYON.
• Identify which AF Aircraft was used for the very first time in operation
JUST CAUSE.
• Respond to the importance of airpower during the Cold War.
Airpower through the Cold War, Part II 111

FLEXIBLE RESPONSE AND VIETNAM
The flexible response strategy increased the Air Force’s responsibilities, which now ranged
from waging all-out nuclear war to supporting the Army in limited conflicts. Tragically,
the lessons of Korea had to be relearned in the skies over Vietnam. During the French
Indochina War, as early as 1954, the JCS considered Operation VULTURE, in which
the U.S. Air Force would be deployed to save the French army at Dien Bien Phu. The
operation would involve nuclear and conventional bombing around the isolated French
garrison. President Eisenhower vetoed this proposal, concerned, like General Omar
Bradley during the Korean War, that this was “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the
wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” The Geneva Agreement of 1954 left Vietnam
divided at the 17th Parallel into the Communist north under Ho Chi Minh, and the pro-
Western south, under Bao Dai and Ngo Dinh Diem. The desire to contain the spread of
Communism brought about America’s involvement in Vietnam. When President Kennedy
declared that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” the
stage was set. The Taylor-Rostow mission of October 1961 investigated the situation
in South Vietnam and proposed the use of American air power against North Vietnam.
Between 1965 and 1974 the United States would drop three times as many bombs in
Southeast Asia as it did in all of World War II, but victory would prove even more elusive
than in the Korean War.
Driven by its nuclear strategic bombing doctrine, the Air Force was ill-prepared for a limited
war in Vietnam. Air Force training, technology, and strategy focused on general nuclear
war with the Soviet Union. F-105 Thunderchief “fighters” had been designed to carry
tactical nuclear weapons in an internal bomb bay, but were forced into use in Vietnam
carrying 750-pound high-explosive bombs. F-104 Starfighters, the fastest fighters in the
world, were designed to intercept Soviet bombers, but lacked the range and dogfighting
ability to compete for air superiority over North Vietnam. Fortunately for the Air Force,
the Navy had begun the development of two superb fighter-bombers, the F-4 Phantom II
and the A-7 Corsair II, better suited to combat, although the absence of a machine gun in
the former aircraft limited its usefulness as an air superiority fighter until the arrival of the
gun-equipped E model.
U.S. Air Force aircrews flew combat missions in South Vietnam before 1964, but only if
accompanied by South Vietnamese aircrews. The Gulf of Tonkin incident involving the
Navy destroyers C. Turner Joy and Maddox in August 1964 resulted in a nearly unanimous
Congressional vote of support for President Johnson “to take all necessary measures to
prevent further aggression.” As in Korea, however, there would be no declaration of war.
Neutral sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia would be off-limits to aerial attack for much
of the conflict. Targets close to China and in Hanoi and Haiphong would also be off-limits
for fear an expanded fight would lead to a direct confrontation between the United States
and the Soviet Union and China, with the possible result of a nuclear holocaust. Vietnam
would be another limited war. National objectives were, for the military, exasperating:
“Don’t lose this war, but don’t win it, either.” As President Johnson stated: “The Air Force
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comes in every morning and says, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb’...and then the state department
comes in and says ‘Not now, or not there, or too much, or not at all.” The strategy was
designed to hold off North Vietnam until South Vietnam became a viable nation able to
defend itself. The Air Force would fight two wars-one against internal subversion by South
Vietnam-based Viet Cong, the other against North Vietnamese aggression.
The Air Force initially intended to destroy North Vietnam’s industrial fabric and then to
interdict its supplies to Viet Cong units in South Vietnam by attacking its railroads and
Ocean shipping and mining its harbors. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor vetoed the air plan, however, because
it might prompt Chinese or Soviet intervention. Like that in Korea, the strategy in Vietnam
was to punish the enemy until it agreed to a ceasefire and peace, not to provoke the
Chinese or Soviets.
The Air Force, they stated, would provide close air support for Army units operating in
South Vietnam. The sustained bombing of North Vietnam began when circumstances
changed in South Vietnam. On February 8, 1965, Operation FLAMING DART I launched
tit-for-tat retaliatory bombings in response to enemy attacks on American installations in
South Vietnam. Such an attack on the Pleiku Special Forces base resulted in limited air
strikes against oil supplies and naval bases in North Vietnam. The strikes were intended
to deter the enemy with the “potential” of American air power.
These circumscribed efforts gave Ho Chi Minh time to construct perhaps the strongest
air defense network in the world at the time. Eventually, it included over 8,000 antiaircraft
artillery pieces, over 40 active surface-to-air missile (SAM)sites, and over 200 MiG-17s,
-19s, and -21s. Continued Communist ground action in South Vietnam brought the Air
Force into the teeth of this network. Operation ROLLING THUNDER began in March
1965 and continued until October 1968. (Please reference the “Focus On: Graduated
Response” article.) It was a frustrating air campaign marked by limits at every turn,
gradualism, measured response, and, especially, restrictive rules of engagement. Doctrine
drove the Air Force to strike against industrial web, but Air Force and Navy aircraft would
be bombing a nation with a gross national product of $1.6 billion, only $192 million of
which came from industrial activity. Like those of Korea, the industrial sources of North
Vietnam’s power were in China and the Soviet Union, beyond the reach of American air
power.
ROLLING THUNDER’S initial targets were roads, radar sites, railroads, and supply
dumps. Because of bad weather the first mission of March 2, 1965, was not followed
up until March 15. The Johnson administration did not permit attacks on airfields until
1967. SA-2 surface-to- air missile sites went unmolested; North Vietnam was permitted
to establish SAM sites, and only after missiles were launched from them could they be
attacked. Another rule restricted operations in a 30-mile zone and prohibited operations in
a 10-mile zone around Hanoi. In 1965 and 1966 165,000 sorties against the North killed
an estimated 37,000, while the war intensified in the South, with 325,000 American troops
stationed there by the end of 1966.

In the summer of 1964, the JCS had proposed a list of 94 strategic targets as part of an
intensified bombing campaign over which President Johnson and his advisers maintained
careful control, assigning targets during Tuesday luncheon meetings at the White House.
They doled out enough to pressure Ho Chi Minh but not too many to prevent peace
negotiations or to invite Soviet or Chinese intervention. Of the many bridges bombed,
the two most famous were the Thanh Hoa bridge eight miles south of Hanoi and the Paul
Doumer bridge in Hanoi itself. Both were critical to transport supplies flowing from China
into North and South Vietnam. Hundreds of bombing sorties conducted over several years
failed to bring down the solidly-built Thanh Hoa bridge. When the Johnson administration
finally permitted the bombing of the Doumer bridge in 1967, fighter-bombers quickly
dropped one span. After several weeks, repair crews put the bridge back into operation
and it had to be bombed again. Over France in World War I, American airmen contested
with Fokkers for air superiority and over Germany in World War II, with Focke-Wulfs
and Messerschmitts. Over Korea they fought MiGs. Over North Vietnam they fought
fewer MiGs as the struggle became primarily directed against surface-to-air missiles and
antiaircraft artillery. When the Johnson administration approved the cessation of bombing
north of the 19th parallel in the spring of 1968, North Vietnam agreed to negotiate. Peace
negotiations began in Paris in November 1968, and the United States halted ROLLING
THUNDER. The JCS then limited Air Force operations in North Vietnam to protective
reaction missions. Aircraft would conduct reconnaissance and would strike only if attacked.
Meanwhile, in South Vietnam, the ground war worsened. In 1965 American commander,
General William Westmoreland, oversaw the change of commitment in South Vietnam
from a coastal enclave strategy for the protection of large cities, to direct ground
involvement (“search and destroy” missions) into the interior after Communist forces in
a massive campaign of close air support and interdiction. By 1968 over half a million
American troops were engaged. Again, as it had in Korea, American strategy called for
substituting air power for ground action whenever possible to reduce Army casualties.
Ironically, while dropping less than one million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, the
enemy, the United States dropped more than four million tons on South Vietnam, the
ally. When Westmoreland ordered a major offensive into the “Iron Triangle” northwest of
Saigon, more than 5,000 Air Force tactical strike sorties, 125 B-52 strikes, and 2,000 airlift
sorties paved the way.
Operations included an extensive defoliation campaign (RANCH HAND) in which C-123
Providers and other transports sprayed 19 million gallons of herbicides over the jungles
that provided convenient hiding places for Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese
regular units out to ambush American ground troops. The overwhelming firepower brought
by America to Vietnam gave Air Force airlift a major role in the war. Because jungle roads
were rarely safe, Allied forces called on Army helicopters and Air Force C47 Skytrains,
C-119 Boxcars, C-123 Providers, and C-130 Hercules to move mountains of supplies
around South Vietnam. C-141 Starlifters and C-5 Galaxies, augmented by commercial
airlines, helped move in personnel and critical supplies from the United States.
Despite the fact that many targets were obscured much of the time by Vietnam’s triple
canopy jungles, the key to limiting ground casualties was close air support. As in earlier
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wars, the solution was to drop more bombs to inundate an area. Carpet bombing by B-52
Stratofortresses, each dropping up to 108 500- and 750-pound bombs, was the favored
technique. Directed by LORAN, occasionally to within one thousand feet of American
units, these ARC LIGHT missions flew at 30,000 feet. Bombs fell without warning. After
the war, Vietnamese who survived this deluge described the ARC LIGHT experiences as
the most terrible they had faced. Another technique involved employing newly developed
gunships, including the AC-47 Spooky (known popularly as Puff the Magic Dragon),
AC-119 Shadow, and AC-130 Spectre. The later carried four 7.62-mm machine guns
and four 20-mm cannon, each firing 6,000 rounds per minute, and 40-mm and 105mm
cannon. Orbiting over enemy concentrations at night, they covered the jungle with a rain
of projectiles, well-appreciated by American soldiers nearby.
Again, as it had in Korea, the Air Force in Vietnam learned that the most difficult function
of air power was interdiction; its major effort involved interdicting the flow of enemy troops
and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail though Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam.
Many targets were merely geographical coordinates superimposed over the vast green
jungle of Southeast Asia. Others were the smoke and dust kicked up by enemy forces as
they moved down the trail by day. At night, they were campfires, hot engines, and other
man-made infrared signatures picked up by airborne sensors. Fighters soon compelled
the enemy to move only by night, when gunships took over. But using $10 million aircraft
to destroy $10,000 trucks was no solution. Three Soviet ZIL-157 six-wheel drive trucks
or 400 bicycles carrying 75 pounds each could provide the fifteen tons of supplies to
Communist forces in South Vietnam each day. More came from plundered American and
South Vietnamese storehouses.
On January 30, 1968, enemy units launched the Tet Offensive, striking cities and other
targets throughout South Vietnam. In February alone, Air Force units launched 16,000
strike sorties in support of ground operations, helping to blunt the offensive. The focus
of the Air Force’s operations, however, was the besieged firebase at Khe Sanh, where
6,000 Marines faced three North Vietnamese divisions. President Johnson told General
Westmoreland that he did not want another “damn [Dien Bien Phu].” Air power would
have to hold off Communist attacks. Three months of Operation NIAGARA totaled 24,000
fighter-bomber and 2,700 B-52 strikes, 110,000 tons of bombs, and nightly assaults by
gunships. Additionally, the Air Force airlifted 12,000 tons of supplies to the surrounded
Marines. Air power guaranteed that there would be no repeat of the French disaster at
Dien Bien Phu.
The Tet offensive proved a military defeat for the Communists, who lost between 50,000
and 80,000 soldiers, but it represented a political victory that galvanized the antiwar
movement in the United States. It led many other Americans to question the war’s
objectives, especially in the face of General Westmoreland’s announcement just before
its launching that he could see “the light at the end of the tunnel.” The Tet offensive
(and a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary) convinced President Johnson not
to run for reelection. It also brought to the Oval Office a new president, Richard Nixon,
committed to ending American involvement in the war and turning it over to the South
Vietnamese. F-5 Freedom Fighters strengthened the South Vietnamese Air Force while

Nixon withdrew American ground units. On March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese
Army invaded South Vietnam with 12 divisions from the north and west. Although South
Vietnamese forces were no match for the invaders, the Spring offensive was a major
miscalculation. American ground forces were gone, but U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy
aviation remained. For the first time in the war, the Air Force was up against the kind of
conventional war it could win. Eighteen thousand fighter-bomber and 1,800 B-52 sorties
stiffened South Vietnamese resolve. In the desperation of the moment, fighter pilots
found themselves aiming 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs at Communist tanks-not cost
effective, but effective nevertheless. The massive employment of air power bought more
time for South Vietnam.
Although American air power had repelled the invasion, implications for Nixon’s
Vietnamization strategy were clear. American hopes for ending the war revolved around
the Air Force’s applying greater pressure on North Vietnam to influence its negotiators
to return to the Paris peace talks. The LINEBACKER I bombing campaign from May to
October 1972 was a major escalation of the war and included the mining of Haiphong
and other ports. Bridges that had resisted bombing now fell before precision laser-guided
and electro-optically-guidedbombs. Before LINEBACKER, peer pressure and pride
drove American aircrews, even as they asked: “What the hell is this all about?’ During
LINEBACKER they had a clear and limited objective-forcing the regime in Hanoi back to
Paris. (Please reference the “Focus On: Easter Offensive” article.)
In Paris some progress was made, but in December 1972 Communist negotiators
became recalcitrant. Their delaying tactics prompted President Nixon to order the most
concentrated and only purely strategic bombing campaign of the war--LINEBACKER II.
For 11 days beginning on December 18, with a Christmas break, SAC B-52s struck at
rail yards and other targets in the outskirts of Hanoi and Haiphong. On the first mission,
129 B-52s penetrated the area, supported by a wide array of Air Force and Navy aircraft.
F-4s dropped chaff in wide corridors. EB-66s, EA-3s, and EA-6s jammed enemy radar
with electronic countermeasures. F-105 Wild Weasels with Shrike radar-seeking missiles
attacked enemy radar sites. SR-71s provided reconnaissance. EC-121s fed early warning
information to the attacking aircraft. F-4s, A-7s, and F-111s struck airfields, storage sites,
and other precision targets. F-4s flew MiG suppression. KC-135s orbited over the Gulf of
Tonkin, ready to feed thirsty jets. This was the air war the Air Force had wanted from the
beginning. A B-52 tail gunner shot down a MiG on the first night, but 200 surface-to-air
missile launches claimed three B-52s-the first 3 of 15 lost.
By December 27 North Vietnam had depleted its supply of SA-2 missiles and much of its
antiaircraft ammunition. Interdiction strikes against rail lines and bridges coupled with mines
in Haiphong Harbor prevented resupply from China or the Soviet Union. By December
30, LINEBACKER II had destroyed many industrial and military targets in the Hanoi and
Haiphong area, although its major impact was on North Vietnam’s morale. To Captain
Ray Bean, an F-4 crewman imprisoned in the “Hanoi Hilton,” the B-52s “got the attention
of the North Vietnamese” because the United States seemed to have forsaken precision
attacks on purely military and industrial targets in favor of “wholesale destruction.” North
Vietnam witnessed the path of devastation a single B-52 could create, especially in an
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urban environment. (Please reference the “Focus On: Strategic Bombing” article.)
Its negotiators returned to the peace talks, agreeing to a cease-fire in January 1973 and
signing a treaty in April. Before the year was out Congress cut funds for Southeast Asian
operations and passed the War Powers Act, which limited the President’s options.
Two years later North Vietnam launched a final offensive against a South Vietnam
operating without American air support. After 55 days, on April 29, 1975, Saigon fell. In
Vietnam, the United States lost 58,000 men and women. The war helped cause a decade
of inflation and alienated a generation. The Air Force had invested over 1.2 million fixed
wing sorties, 6.2 million tons of explosives, 2,118 dead, 599 missing in action, and 2,257
aircraft (at a cost of $3.1 billion).
The Air Force learned the dangers of political and military micromanagement, of
gradualism, and of being used to influence the conduct of America’s enemies instead
of defeating them. Restrictive rules of engagement caused aircrews to die and left little
room for initiative. “Route packages,” artificial divisions of North Vietnam in which Air
Force and Navy aircraft operated separately, guaranteed a dilution of effort. A generation
of future air leaders came away convinced that “body counts,” sortie rates, and tons of
bombs dropped were all poor means for judging air power’s effectiveness. Leaders, like
General Robin Olds and Colonel George E. “Bud” Day, were instrumental in focusing the
Air Force on its core competencies and core values. (Please reference the “Focus On:
Leadership, Gen. Robin Olds” and “Focus On: Valor” articles.) They also relearned
the importance of air superiority, but with a twist-air superiority now involved not only
overcoming an enemy’s air force; it involved also overcoming an enemy’s air defenses
on the surface. Air power had to be focused, united, and coordinated in what was termed
“jointness” after the war.
Most of all, the Air Force learned the dangers of strict, uncompromising adherence to
doctrine. In the years after Vietnam a new generation of air leaders realized that the Air
Force had focused almost exclusively on the strategic bombing of industrial chokepoints
without regard for the character of the society to be bombed or the type of war to be fought.
Training, technology, and doctrine revolved around the destruction of a developed nation’s
industrial fabric or the nuclear destruction of a nation’s cities. The Air Force had become
imprisoned by a doctrine established in the years before and after World War II. Applied
against undeveloped states such as North Korea and North Vietnam, each equipped
and supplied by other countries, and unable to use nuclear weapons because of the
Cold War and moral considerations, strategic bombardment and its related strategies did
not prevail. For additional resources on Vietnam please visit http://www.vietnamwar50th.
com/.

THE COLD WAR CONCLUDED
President Kennedy’s flexible-response nuclear war-fighting doctrine of the early 1960s

lacked the technology to match its vision of many options adapted to meet the varieties
of Cold War crises. Advances in geodesy (Geologic science of the size and shape of the
earth) and cartography and the integrated circuit developed in the early 1960s for missile
and satellite guidance systems, significantly improved missile accuracy. Decreased CEP
(circular error probable-the radius of a circle in which at least 50 percent of the targeted
missiles would hit) meant that warheads could be smaller. New warheads could be sized
to detonate at kiloton or megaton ranges. Because they were smaller and lighter, more
warheads could be mounted to each ICBM and SLBM. In the early 1970s the DOD
developed MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles), allowing three or
more warheads on each ICBM and SLBM. The Air Force’s arsenal did not rise above 1,054
ICBMs; many now carried three MIRVs (Minuteman III) as opposed to earlier models that
carried a single warhead. Strategic launchers remained static, but warheads multiplied.
Although Secretary of Defense McNamara introduced “counterforce” targeting in 1962,
the improvement in CEP and dramatic increases in the number of nuclear warheads in the
American arsenal of the 1970s encouraged the Air Force to return to the more traditional
practice of bombing precise military targets instead of countervalue cities. Counterforce
targeting identified enemy military and industrial choke points-command centers, military
industries and bases, and ICBM silos. Whatever the targets selected, in the 1960s political
leaders adopted a doctrine for deterring nuclear war known as “assured destruction,”
i.e., the capability to destroy an aggressor as a viable society, even after a well-planned
and executed surprise attack on American forces. This doctrine held that superpower
strategic nuclear forces would be sized and protected to survive a nuclear attack and then
to retaliate with sufficient force to ensure a level of destruction unacceptable to the other
side. With such retaliatory destruction assured against an aggressor, no rational Soviet
or American leader would consider starting a nuclear war. On May 26, 1972, the United
States and the Soviet Union signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which limited
both sides to two ABM sites each to protect the national capital and an ICBM complex.
The treaty reinforced the continued effectiveness of assured destruction in deterring war
in the face of new, destabilizing ABM weapons. SALT I, the Strategic Arms Limitation
Treaty which was signed at the same time, limited the numbers of nuclear weapons with
the objective of obtaining a verified freeze on the numerical growth and destabilizing
characteristics of each side’s strategic nuclear forces.
The Nixon administration adopted counterforce targeting beginning with SIOP 5 of
1974. The Carter administration continued this focus with Presidential Directive 59 and
SIOP 5D. Counterforce, however, offered an option to assured destruction of a limited,
prolonged nuclear war based on accurate attacks with limited collateral damage while
maintaining a creditable second strike capability. In an address on March 23, 1983,
President Ronald Reagan proposed replacing the doctrine of assured destruction with
one of assured survival, in the form of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). SDI was
to focus on the development and deployment of a combination of defensive systems
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such as space-based lasers, particle beams, railguns, and fast ground-launched missiles,
among other weapons, to intercept Soviet ICBMs during their ascent through the Earth’s
outer atmosphere and their ballistic path in space. While the ABM Treaty restricted
various methods of testing SDI weapon systems, the end of the Cold War and collapse
of the Soviet Union removed the justification for the level of research and development
associated with this project, although research continued at a much reduced level under
the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Beginning in March 1985, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
initiated major changes in Soviet-American relations. The Intermediate Range Nuclear
Forces Treaty in December 1987 eliminated short-range nuclear missiles in Europe,
including Air Force ground-launched cruise missiles stationed in the United Kingdom.
Gorbachev’s announcement in May 1988 that the Soviet Union, after nine years of
inconclusive combat, would begin withdrawing from the war in Afghanistan, indicated a
major reduction in Cold War tensions, but it provided only a hint of the rapid changes to
come. Relatively free and open Russian elections in March 1989 and a coal miners strike
in July shook the foundations of Communist rule. East Germany opened the Berlin Wall in
November, which led to German reunification in October 1990. A coup against Gorbachev
in August 1991 which was put down by Boris Yeltsin, led to the dissolution of the Soviet
Union and its replacement by the Commonwealth of Independent States on December
25, 1991.
This chain of events brought major changes to American nuclear strategy. Under START
I, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union
in July 1991, the U.S. was reduced to a level of 6,000 total warheads on deployed ICBMs,
SLBMs, and heavy bombers. START II, which was never ratified by the U.S. Senate, was
signed in January 1993. It was designed to reduce (upon entry into force) total deployed
warheads to a range of 3,000 to 3,500. The resulting force structure would ultimately
lead to the deployment of five hundred single warhead Minuteman III ICBMs, 66 B-52H
and 20 B-2 heavy bombers. Ninety-four B-1 heavy bombers would be reoriented to a
conventional role by 2003, in addition to all Peacekeeper ICBMs would be removed from
active inventory through the elimination of their associated silo launchers. The Air Force,
by Presidential direction in September 1991, notified SAC to remove heavy bombers from
alert status. SAC was subsequently inactivated several months later in June 1992. U.S.
Strategic Command replaced Strategic Air Command, controlling all remaining Air Force
and Navy strategic nuclear forces.
Rebuilding the conventional Air Force after Vietnam began with personnel changes. The
Vietnam-era Air Force included many officers and airmen who had entered its ranks in
World War II. President Nixon ended the draft in 1973 in favor of an “all volunteer” American
military. The Air Force attracted recruits as best it could, but encountered problems with
the racial friction and alcohol and drug abuse that reflected America’s social problems.
Enough Vietnam career veterans remained, however, to direct this new all volunteer
force and institute changes. One of the most noticeable changes was more realistic, and
thus more dangerous, combat training. In combat simulations Air Force pilots flew as
aggressors employing enemy tactics. By 1975 their training had evolved into Red Flag

at the U.S. Air Force Weapons and Tactics Center at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada,
in which crews flew both individual sorties and formations in realistic situations, gaining
experience before they entered actual combat.
The vulnerability of air bases to enemy attack and sabotage had long been the Achilles
heel of land-based air power. In western Europe, living under the threat of a massive
Warsaw Pact air offensive and land invasion, the U.S. Air Force spearheaded an active
program to improve the survivability and readiness of air bases. The effort was marked by
the construction of thousands of reinforced concrete aircraft shelters and other hardened
facilities, alternate runways, rapid repair elements, chemical weapons protection, and a
host of other defensive measures.
The Air Force’s post-Vietnam rebuilding also involved applying improved technology. The
battle for control of the skies over North Vietnam underscored the need for a dogfighting
aircraft that featured maneuverability before speed-one armed with missiles and cannon.
Begun in the late 1960s and operational in the mid-1970s, the F-15 Eagle and the F-16
Fighting Falcon filled this need. The struggle against radar-guided antiaircraft artillery and
surface-to-air missiles in Vietnam encouraged the Air Force to pursue stealth technology
utilizing special paints, materials, and designs that reduced or eliminated an aircraft’s
radar, thermal, and electronic signatures.
Other Vietnam War technologies included precision guided missiles and bombs. From
April 1972 to January 1973 the United States used over 4,000 of these early “smart
weapons” in Vietnam to knock down bridges and destroy enemy tanks. Continued
development of laser-guided bombs and electro-optically-guided missiles offered the
prospects of pinpoint, precision bombing on which traditional Air Force doctrine rested-
the destruction of chokepoints in an enemy nation’s industrial web with economy of force
and without collateral damage. These technologies, which afforded a strike precision far
beyond that available to earlier air power thinkers, sparked a revision of the traditional
doctrine of strategic bombing. This revision took two forms. First, the Air Force, to
overcome numerically superior Warsaw Pact forces, cooperated with the Army in updating
the tactical doctrine of AirLand Battle promulgated in Field Manual 100-5 in 1982. The
Air Force would make deep air attacks on an enemy army to isolate it on the battlefield,
conduct battlefield air interdiction (BAI) to disrupt the movement of secondary forces to the
front, and provide close air support (CAS) to Army ground forces. The Air Force procured
the A-10 Thunderbolt II CAS attack-bomber in the 1970s to support such missions.
Participation in three crises in the 1980s allowed the Air Force to test these new ideas
and technologies. Operation URGENT FURY (October 1983) rescued American students
and restored order on the island of Grenada. In this operation the Air Force primarily
transported troops and cargo, but discovered problems with command, control, planning,
and intraservice and interservice coordination. President Reagan called on England-
based F-111s to strike against Libya on April 19, 1986, in support of his policies to counter
state terrorism. Operation ELDORADO CANYON exposed continuing difficulties with
target identification and intelligence, punctuated by some inaccurate bombing. (Please
reference the “Focus On: Precision Attack” article.) Finally, Operation JUST CAUSE
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in 1989 again tested air operations, this time in Panama. The Air Force provided the airlift
for troops and supplies, although the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter made its debut when
it and an AC-130 Spectre gunship intimidated Panamanian troops loyal to the dictator
Manuel Noriega. (Please reference the “Focus On: Decisive Battle” article.)
Second, the Air Force pursued a new approach to conventional strategic bombing
doctrine in the fertile atmosphere of the post-Vietnam era. Key leaders in the effort were
Generals Charles Boyd and Charles Link and Colonel Dennis Drew. Strategic bombing
doctrine of the Air Corps Tactical School, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam had relied
on carpet bombing to saturate linear chokepoints, with industry as the key. Colonel John
Warden’s ideas in the Gulf War relied on precision munitions to attack an expanded
complex of targets. He viewed an enemy nation’s war-making capacity in five concentric
rings. The center ring consisted of its civilian and military leadership, the first ring out,
its key production sources, the second ring out, its transportation and communication
infrastructure, third ring out, the will of its population, and, the last ring, its military forces.
An air attack on these would be “inside-out” warfare, starting from the center and working
outward. The first objective of an air war would be to seize air superiority followed by
attacks on an enemy’s leadership and other vital centers. Colonel John Boyd focused
on “control warfare” and “strategic paralysis” by loosening the observation, orientation,
decision, and action loops (the “OODA Loop”) that maintained the “moral-mental-physical
being” of an enemy nation.

Focus On: Graduated Response
ROLLING THUNDER

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association, March 2005.
It was our best chance to knock North Vietnam out of the war, but it was doomed
to failure.
Rolling Thunder, the air war against North Vietnam, began on March 2, 1965. The first
mission was an indication of things to come.
The targets, timing of the attack, and other details of the operation were all decided in
Washington, D.C. There were only two targets. Both were relatively minor, located just
north of the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Vietnam. The enemy’s real
strength around Hanoi and Haiphong was not touched, not even threatened. It was a
strange way to begin a war.
Air Force F-105s, F-100s, and B-57s struck an ammunition depot at Xom Bang, 10 miles
north of the DMZ. Meanwhile, Navy and South Vietnamese aircraft bombed a naval base
at Quang Khe, 65 miles from the DMZ.
It would be almost two weeks before the next Rolling Thunder missions took place, again
against minor targets not far above the DMZ.
Maxwell D. Taylor, the ambassador to South Vietnam (and former Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff), doubted that the enemy was impressed. “I fear that to date Rolling Thunder
in their eyes has merely been a few isolated thunderclaps,” Taylor said.
“The North Vietnamese probably didn’t even know the planes were there,” said Adm. U.S.
Grant Sharp, commander in chief of US Pacific Command.
Rolling Thunder would last for more than three years, making it the longest air campaign
in US history to that point. More bombs would be dropped on Vietnam than were dropped
on all of Europe in World War II.
The campaign ended in 1968 without achieving any strategic results. It did not persuade
the North Vietnamese to quit the war, nor did it stop Hanoi’s infiltration of troops and
equipment into South Vietnam.
From beginning to end, Rolling Thunder was hampered by a policy of gradual escalation,
which robbed air strikes of their impact and gave North Vietnam time to recover and adjust.
For various reasons—including fear of provoking a confrontation with North Vietnam’s
Russian and Chinese allies—all sorts of restrictions and constraints were imposed.
US airmen could not attack a surface-to-air missile site unless it fired a missile at them.
For the first two years, airmen were forbidden to strike the MiG bases from which enemy
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fighters were flying. Every so often, Washington would stop the bombing to see if Hanoi’s
leaders were ready to make peace.
“In Rolling Thunder, the Johnson Administration devised an air campaign that did a lot
of bombing in a way calculated not to threaten the enemy regime’s survival,” Air Force
historian Wayne Thompson said in To Hanoi and Back. “President Johnson repeatedly
assured the communist rulers of North Vietnam that his forces would not hurt them, and
he clearly meant it. Government buildings in downtown Hanoi were never targeted.”
Drift to War
Rolling Thunder was not the first combat for USAF airmen in Vietnam. Air Force crews
deployed there in 1961 to train and support the South Vietnamese Air Force. By 1962,
they were flying combat missions in response to emergency requests. However, Gen.
William W. Momyer said in Airpower in Three Wars, they were “not authorized to conduct
combat missions without a Vietnamese crew member. Even then, the missions were
training missions although combat weapons were delivered.”
The conflict became overt in August 1964 when communist patrol boats attacked US
Navy vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin. In response, Congress passed a resolution authorizing
the President “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force” to repel any
attack, prevent further aggression, and assist allies.
The Navy promptly launched reprisal strikes, dubbed Pierce Arrow, against North
Vietnamese PT boat bases, and the Air Force moved into Southeast Asia in force. B-57s,
F-100s, and F-105s deployed to bases in South Vietnam and Thailand. The presence of
the newly arrived aircrews was soon challenged.
In November, a Viet Cong mortar attack at Bien Hoa killed four Americans, wounded
72, and destroyed five B-57s. In February 1965, eight Americans were killed and more
than 100 wounded in a sapper attack on Pleiku. Navy and Air Force aircraft flew reprisal
strikes, called Operation Flaming Dart, against North Vietnam Feb. 7-11.
The Johnson Administration decided that these reprisal missions were not sufficient. A
Presidential directive on Feb. 13 called for “a program of measured and limited air action”
against “selected military targets” in North Vietnam. It stipulated that “until further notice”
the strikes would remain south of the 19th parallel, confining the action to the North
Vietnamese panhandle.
In his memoir, The Vantage Point, Lyndon B. Johnson said the decision for sustained
strikes was made “because it had become clear, gradually but unmistakably, that Hanoi
was moving in for the kill.” The Vietnam Advisory Campaign (Nov. 15, 1961, to March 1,
1965) was over. The Vietnam Defensive Campaign was about to begin. The first Rolling
Thunder mission was readied.

Doubts and Redirection
The conventional wisdom, often repeated at the time, was that the United States must not
get bogged down in a land war in Asia. Nevertheless, that was exactly what was about to
happen.
On March 8, 1965, marines deployed to Da Nang to defend the air base there. They
were the first US ground combat forces in Vietnam. “President Johnson’s authorization
of Operation Rolling Thunder not only started the air war but unexpectedly triggered the
introduction of US troops into ground combat as well,” McNamara said.
By the middle of March, Rolling Thunder consisted of one mission a week in the southern
part of North Vietnam. Apparently, the White House expected this to produce fast results
and was disappointed when it did not.
“After a month of bombing with no response from the North Vietnamese, optimism began
to wane,” said the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the war written in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and leaked to the New York Times in 1971.
Although President Johnson had decided to use ground troops in Vietnam, there was no
public announcement. The decision was embodied in an April 6 National Security Action
Memorandum. The President ordered that “premature publicity be avoided by all possible
precautions.”
The fighting forces were told of the change in strategy at an April 20 Honolulu conference,
when McNamara announced that US emphasis from then on would be the ground war in
the south. Targets in the south would take precedence over those in the north, and sorties
would be diverted from the north to fill the requirement.
“This fateful decision contributed to our ultimate loss of South Vietnam as much as any
other single action we took during our involvement,” Sharp later charged in his book,
Strategy for Defeat.
The President on May 12 called a week long halt to the bombing—the first of many such
halts—to see if North Vietnam was ready to negotiate. It wasn’t.
Micromanagement of the air war continued. “I was never allowed in the early days to
send a single airplane north [without being] told how many bombs I would have on it, how
many airplanes were in the flight, and what time it would be over the target,” said Lt. Gen.
Joseph H. Moore, commander of the 2nd Air Division and its successor organization, 7th
Air Force. “And if we couldn’t get there at that time for some reason (weather or what not)
we couldn’t put the strike on later. We had to ... cancel it and start over again.”
Thuds, Phantoms, and Others

In Rolling Thunder, the US attacked the North with all sorts of aircraft, but the worst of the
fighting was borne by the F-105s and the F-4s.
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The F-105—Thunderchief, Lead Sled, Thud—flew 75 percent of the strikes and took more
losses over North Vietnam than any other kind of aircraft. When Rolling Thunder ended,
more than half of the Air Force’s F-105s were gone.
The F-4 Phantom, better able to handle North Vietnam’s MiGs, flew both strike missions
and air cover for the F-105s. As the war churned on, the F-4 became the dominant USAF
fighter-bomber. The F-4 also accounted for 107 of the 137 MiGs shot down by the Air
Force.
Pilots were credited with a full combat tour after 100 missions over North Vietnam. That
was not an easy mark to reach. “By your 66th mission, you’ll have been shot down twice
and picked up once,” F-105 pilots said. A report from the Office of the Secretary of Defense
in May 1967 said, “The air campaign against heavily defended areas costs us one pilot in
every 40 sorties.”
F-105s and F-4s flew mostly from bases in Thailand and worked the northern and western
“route packs” in North Vietnam. Navy pilots from carriers at Yankee Station in the Tonkin
Gulf flew mainly against targets nearer the coastline.
Notable among the Navy aircraft was the A-6 Intruder, an excellent all-weather medium
bomber. The Air Force did not have an all-weather capability in the theater except on its
B-52 bombers, which were not permitted to operate more than a few miles north of the
DMZ.
Among those flying north or supporting the operation were tankers, escort jammers,
defense suppression airplanes, rescue aircraft, and reconnaissance systems, as well as
command and control airplanes.
One of the big operational changes in the Vietnam War was the everyday refueling of
combat aircraft. Fighters on their way into North Vietnam topped up their tanks from KC-
135 tankers, which flew orbits above Thailand, Laos, and the Gulf of Tonkin, then met the
tankers again on the way out to get enough fuel to make it home. Aerial refueling more
than doubled the range of the combat aircraft.
USAF fighters flying from Thailand bases were part of a strange organization called
7th/13th Air Force. It was created for several reasons, one of which was to let US Pacific
Command keep control of the air war in the north rather than turning it over to the Army-
dominated Military Assistance Command Vietnam.
When the aircraft and pilots were on the ground, they were in 13th Air Force, with
headquarters in the Philippines. When they were in the air, they were controlled by 7th Air
Force in Saigon—which, for these missions, reported to Pacific Air Forces and US Pacific
Command, not to MACV.
MiGs, SAMs, and AAA

When Rolling Thunder began, North Vietnam’s air defense system did not amount to much
and could have been destroyed easily. US policy, however, gave the North Vietnamese
the time, free from attack, to build a formidable air defense.
The system consisted of anti-aircraft artillery, SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, MiG fighters,
and radars, all of Soviet design, some supplied by the Soviet Union and some by China.
Although the SAM and MiG threats got more attention, about 68 percent of the aircraft
losses were to anti-aircraft fire. By 1968, North Vietnam had 1,158 AAA sites in operation,
with a total of 5,795 guns deployed.
The first SAM site in North Vietnam was detected April 5, 1965, but US airmen were not
permitted to strike it.
In a memo to McNamara, John T. McNaughton, assistant secretary of defense for
international security affairs, said, “We won’t bomb the sites, and that will be a signal to
North Vietnam not to use them.” On a visit to Vietnam, McNaughton told Moore at 2nd Air
Division, “You don’t think the North Vietnamese are going to use them! Putting them in is
just a political ploy by the Russians to appease Hanoi.”
McNaughton must have been surprised on July 24 when a SAM, fired by a Soviet missile
crew, shot down an Air Force F-4C.
Almost 5,000 SAMs were fired during Rolling Thunder, bringing down 101 US aircraft.
The fighters could avoid the SAMs by dropping to lower altitude, but that put them into the
lethal shooting gallery of the guns.
By the rules of engagement, US airmen could attack a SAM site only if it was actually
shooting at them. In one instance, Navy pilots discovered 111 SAMs loaded on railcars
near Hanoi, but were denied permission to bomb them. “We had to fight all 111 of them
one at a time,” one of the pilots said.
The Air Force had two ways of dealing with the SAMs: jammers and “Wild Weasels.”
EB-66 jamming aircraft accompanied Air Force strike flights. Eventually, fighters got their
own jamming pods to disrupt the radars that guided the SAMs and the AAA.
A more direct solution was the fielding of the Wild Weasels, fighter aircraft especially
equipped to find and destroy the Fan Song radars that directed the SAMs. The original
Weasels, which demolished their first SAM site in December 1965, were F-100Fs.
Subsequently, they were replaced by two-seat F-105Gs in the Weasel role.
The enemy fighters that operated over North Vietnam were MiG-17s and MiG-21s. There
were some obsolete MiG-15s around, but they were used mostly for training. The MiG-19,
imported from China, did not make its appearance in Vietnam until Rolling Thunder had
ended.
The MiG-17 was no longer top of the line, but it performed well as an interceptor, especially
effective at lower altitudes where it used its guns to good advantage. Three of North
Vietnam’s 16 aces flew MiG-17s.
The MiG-21 was North Vietnam’s best fighter and a close match in capability with the F-4.
It was equipped with a gun but relied primarily on its Atoll missiles.
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“The North Vietnamese were able to expand and develop new airfields without any
counteraction on our part until April 1967 when we hit Hoa Loc in the western part of the
country and followed with attacks against Kep,” Momyer said. “The main fighter base,
Phuc Yen, was not struck until October of the same year. Gia Lam remained free from
attack throughout the war because US officials decided to permit transport aircraft from
China, the Soviet Union, and the International Control Commission to have safe access to
North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese, of course, used Gia Lam as an active MiG base.”
The best known air battle of the war was Jan. 2, 1967, when pilots of the 8th Tactical
Fighter Wing from Ubon, Thailand, led by Col. Robin Olds in the famous MiG Sweep, shot
down seven MiG-21s over the Red River Valley in North Vietnam.
“MiG killing was not our objective,” said Maj. Gen. Alton D. Slay, deputy chief of staff for
operations at 7th Air Force. “The objective was to protect the strike force. Any MiG kills
obtained were considered as a bonus. A shootdown of a strike aircraft was considered ...
a mission failure, regardless of the number of MiGs killed.”
Lines on the Map

Key parts of North Vietnam were off limits to US air strikes. For the first month of Rolling
Thunder, the operations were confined to a stretch of the panhandle south of the 19th
parallel, which runs just below Vinh. The first targets around Hanoi and Haiphong were
not approved until October and November.
The boundary line for “armed reconnaissance”—the area in which such targets as trucks
and trains could be hit when they were found—gradually crept north but very slowly.
“This east-west bomb line was joined by a north-south line at 105 degrees 20 minutes
east that permitted armed reconnaissance in northwestern North Vietnam (so long as
the bombs stayed at least 30 nautical miles south of the Chinese border),” said Air Force
historian Thompson. “The two lines fenced off Route Package 6 (the ‘northeast quadrant’
containing the major cities of Hanoi and Haiphong) from armed reconnaissance until the
spring of 1966, when rail and road segments were targeted there.”
Even after that, Hanoi and Haiphong were surrounded by large doughnut-shaped areas
on the map which were protected from air strikes by US policy. The outer sections—
the “doughnuts” themselves—were restricted zones, in which strikes required special
permission (which was seldom given) from Washington. The “holes” in the doughnuts
were prohibited zones, in which the limitations were more severe.
60 miles wide, encircling a 20-mile prohibited zone. The restricted zone at Haiphong was
20 miles wide and the prohibited zone, eight miles.
“Knowing that US rules of engagement prevented us from striking certain kinds of targets,
the North Vietnamese placed their SAM sites within these protected zones whenever
possible to give their SAMs immunity from attack,” Momyer said. “Within 10 miles of
Hanoi, a densely populated area that was safe from attack except for specific targets from

time to time, numerous SAM sites were located. These protected SAMs, with an effective
firing range of 17 nautical miles, could engage targets out to 27 miles from Hanoi. And
most of the targets related to the transportation and supply system that supported the
North Vietnamese troops fighting in South Vietnam were within 30 miles of Hanoi.”
The White House held firm control of the targeting.
“The final decision on what targets were to be authorized, the number of sorties allowed,
and in many instances even the tactics to be used by our pilots was made at a Tuesday
luncheon in the White House, attended by the President, the Secretary of State, the
Secretary of Defense, Presidential Assistant Walt Rostow, and the Presidential Press
Secretary (first Bill Moyers, later George Christian),” Sharp said. “The significant point is
that no professional military man, not even the Chairman of the JCS, was present at these
luncheons until late in 1967.”
Taking obvious pride in the process, LBJ said, “I won’t let those Air Force generals bomb
the smallest outhouse ... without checking with me.” On another occasion, he said that “I
spent 10 hours a day worrying about all this, picking the targets one by one, making sure
we didn’t go over the limits.”
The President and his advisors were reluctant to bomb the ports and supply centers
around Hanoi and Haiphong, preferring to target the infiltration routes farther south. That
was the hard way to do it.
“To reduce the flow through an enemy’s supply line to zero is virtually impossible, so long
as he is willing and able to pay an extravagant price in lost men and supplies,” Momyer
said.
“To wait until he has disseminated his supplies among thousands of trucks, sampans,
rafts, and bicycles and then to send our multimillion-dollar aircraft after those individual
vehicles—this is how to maximize our cost, not his,” he said.
The POL Strikes

McNamara’s growing unhappiness with Rolling Thunder was hardened by the results of
the POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants) strikes in the summer of 1966.
North Vietnam had no oil fields or refineries. All of its petroleum products were imported,
mostly from the Soviet Union, and arrived through the port at Haiphong. From there, they
were taken by road, rail, and waterways to large tank farms, only a few of which had been
bombed.
On June 29, 1966, US aircraft attacked the Hanoi and Haiphong POL complexes for the
first time. The Air Force struck at Hanoi, the Navy at Haiphong. More than 80 percent of
the storage facilities were destroyed.
It was a strong operation, but it had come too late. North Vietnam, anticipating that the
POL facilities would eventually be struck, had dispersed some of its supplies and had
developed underground storage facilities.
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“It became clear as the summer wore on that, although we had destroyed a goodly portion
of the North Vietnamese major fuel-storage capacity, they could still meet requirements
through their residual dispersed capacity, supplemented by continued imports that we
were not permitted to stop,” Sharp said. “The fact that they could disperse POL stores in
drums in populated areas was a great advantage to the enemy. We actually had photos
of urban streets lined with oil drums, but were not allowed to hit them.”
According to the Pentagon Papers, “Bulk imports via oceangoing tanker continued at
Haiphong despite the great damage to POL docks and storage there. Tankers merely
stood offshore and unloaded into barges and other shallow-draft boats, usually at night,
and the POL was transported to hundreds of concealed locations along internal waterways.
More POL was also brought in already drummed, convenient for dispersed storage and
handling and virtually immune from interdiction.”
“The bombing of the POL system was carried out with as much skill, effort, and attention
as we could devote to it, starting on June 29, and we haven’t been able to dry up those
supplies,” McNamara later told the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees,
adding that “I don’t believe that the bombing up to the present has significantly reduced,
nor any bombing that I could contemplate in the future would significantly reduce, the
actual flow of men and materiel to the South.”
Hanoi Hangs On
One of many snide observations in the Pentagon Papers—written at the behest of Assistant
Secretary McNaughton, the official who had seen no threat in the SAMs—was that “1967
would be the year in which many of the previous restrictions were progressively lifted and
the vaunting boosters of airpower would be once again proven wrong. It would be the
year in which we relearned the negative lessons of previous wars on the ineffectiveness
of strategic bombing.”
A number of important targets were struck for the first time in 1967. Among them were the
Thai Nguyen steel complex (in March), key MiG bases (in April and October), the Doumer
Bridge, over which the railroad entered Hanoi (in August and December), and several
other targets inside the Hanoi and Haiphong restricted areas (in July).
As always, though, political considerations were trumps. An approved strike on Phuc
Yen air base was called off in September because the State Department had promised a
visiting European dignitary that he could land there without fear of bombing.
“In 1967, we were allowed better targets than in ’66 and were allowed to use more strike
sorties, so that the air war progressed quite well,” Sharp said later. “Of course, ships were
still allowed to come into Haiphong, and we weren’t allowed to hit close to the docks. We
were able to cut the lines of communication between Haiphong and Hanoi so that it was
difficult for them to get materiel through. If we had continued the campaign and eased the
restrictions in 1968, I believe we could have brought the war to a successful conclusion.”

For his part, McNamara had already given up on the air war, and in cooperation with
McNaughton and a group of civilian consultants, was pursuing plans—later abandoned—
to build a 160-mile barrier of minefields, barbed wire, ditches, and military strong points
across Vietnam and Laos.
Disheartened, McNamara left office Feb. 29, 1968. In his memoir, In Retrospect, he said,
“I do not know to this day whether I quit or was fired.”
End of the Thunder

President Johnson visited the war zone in December 1967, spent a night at Korat, Thailand,
where he met with aircrews and commanders, and seemed buoyed by the contact.
In January, however, North Vietnam launched its Tet Offensive, the biggest attack of the
war, striking bases and cities all over the South. The offensive was not a military success,
but it jolted the American public. Support for the war fell severely.
Challenged by fellow Democrats in the Presidential primaries and losing ground in
the opinion polls, Johnson at last decided that he had had enough. On March 31, he
announced that he would neither seek nor accept his party’s nomination for another term
as President.
He also announced a partial bombing halt, which ended Rolling Thunder operations
north of the 19th parallel. The partial halt merged into an overall halt of bombing in North
Vietnam on Nov. 1.
Rolling Thunder was over. During its course—over three years and eight months—the Air
Force and the other services had flown 304,000 fighter sorties and 2,380 B-52 sorties.
Earl H. Tilford Jr., writing in The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, stated one view of
the campaign, saying that: “Rolling Thunder stands as the classic example of airpower
failure.”
A Senate Armed Services subcommittee, which held hearings on Rolling Thunder in
August 1967, reached a different conclusion.
“That the air campaign has not achieved its objectives to a greater extent cannot be
attributed to inability or impotence of airpower,” the panel said. “It attests, rather, to the
fragmentation of our air might by overly restrictive controls, limitations, and the doctrine
of ‘gradualism’ placed on our aviation forces, which prevented them from waging the air
campaign in the manner and according to the timetable which was best calculated to
achieve maximum results.”
The campaign’s failure is beyond dispute, but laying the fault to airpower is questionable.
There is no way to know what an all-out bombing effort in 1965 might have achieved.
Perhaps no amount of bombing would have done the job, but when Rolling Thunder
ended, our best chance of knocking North Vietnam out of the war was gone. Rolling
Thunder had not been built to succeed, and it didn’t...
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Focus On: The Easter Offensive
OPERATION LINEBACKER I
By Rebecca Grant. Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association, June 2012.
The North Vietnamese forces massed, and that opened them up to attack from US
airpower.
Forty years ago, the nation relied on airpower to halt North Vietnam’s biggest conventional
invasion of the Vietnam War. This was Linebacker I.
At the time, few expected such a test. It was 1972, the year the US got out of Vietnam
and handed off defense to South Vietnamese forces. From a peak of more than 500,000
forces in country in 1968, the US had reduced troops to 156,000 by January 1972, pulling
179,000 in 1971 alone. Plans called for dropping to 67,000 by July.
President Richard M. Nixon called the policy “Vietnamization.” Behind the scenes his
Administration conducted peace talks in Paris aimed at getting both the US and the North
out of South Vietnam and leaving the country intact. Part of the deal was a pledge to
return with air and naval power if needed.
America’s grand strategy was changing, too, and geopolitical shifts would figure in the
timing of the North Vietnamese attack. Nixon visited China from Feb. 21 to 28, 1972,
and the famous Moscow Summit that for a time melted the Cold War into déténte was
scheduled for May 1972.
Hanoi took note. The North had not achieved its goal of unifying Vietnam under a
communist government. Superpower rapprochement threatened the support for the
regime. A successful attack to split South Vietnam would upend the situation and put
Hanoi in a much more powerful position. The so-called Easter Offensive launched on
March 30, 1972.
The invasion was not spontaneous. Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap had rearmed the North in
the years since the failed Tet Offensive of 1968. A force of three divisions, with about
30,000 men and 200 Soviet T-54 tanks, crossed the demilitarized zone. Within a few
days, attacks began along three fronts, mounted from over the border in Laos. The plan
called for a rapid victory to split South Vietnam into three parts and give the North control
of Saigon, capital of the South.
“The North Vietnamese knew from their experience that they could not win at the
conference table what they had not gained on the battlefield,” wrote Nguyen Tien Hung
and Jerrold L. Schecter in the 1986 book The Palace File.
Giap wanted to take advantage of the drawdown of American forces. Giap also doubted
that his southern opponents—known as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)—

would provide strong resistance, given their recent poor performance in an aborted
invasion of Laos. Whatever gains Giap’s forces made would be useful bargaining chips.
“The crucial factor that finally tipped the balance was President Nixon’s visit to Peking,
which made the Politburo in Hanoi doubt that China would continue to support them as it
had before,” Giap’s biographer Peter G. MacDonald confirmed.
Expeditionary Airpower
To counter Giap’s initiative, the first task was to move fighters back into theater as fast
as possible. Contingency plans called for bringing in Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps
aircraft to augment the South Vietnamese defenders. But the plan was untried.
Nobody knew whether airpower could swing back into a theater in time to deny enemy
objectives.
“If anybody had told me ... that you could take a fighter wing out of Holloman Air Force
Base, New Mexico, and have it overseas in less than a week and have it flying in combat,
I’d have said, ‘You’re nuts!’ “ said Gen. Lucius D. Clay Jr., who was commander of Pacific
Air Forces during Linebacker I.
The USAF rapid deployment was dubbed Constant Guard. In actions during phase one,
beginning April 5, 38 C-141 flights in a 72-hour period brought personnel and cargo into
Thailand. F-105s from McConnell AFB, Kan., flew to Korat AB, Thailand.
The first wave of 18 F-4Es from Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., arrived on April 11, and
another 18 followed a day later. Phase two of Constant Guard dispatched another 36 F-4s
from Homestead AFB, Fla., and Eglin AFB, Fla., in the first week of May.
In Constant Guard III, 72 F-4s were sent from Holloman to Takhli AB, Thailand.
Bombers responded, too. In Strategic Air Command’s Bullet Shot operations, some 120
B-52s deployed to Guam and Thailand between April and June. Tankers in theater rose
from 30 to 114. Between April 1 and May 24 the number of strike aircraft the US Air Force
had available for operations in Southeast Asia went from 375 to 625; by the end of July, it
was nearly 900, noted historian Eduard Mark.
“I think this exercise has really proved that the Air Force has grown with the times. It
shows our flexibility to go anywhere in the world and do the job assigned,” Clay noted.
The Marines and Navy also rushed forces to the theater. Three squadrons of Marine
F-4s deployed to Da Nang in South Vietnam in early April. The Navy had two carriers on
station when the offensive began. Three more arrived in early April, a fifth received orders
to deploy to Southeast Asia, and a sixth came on April 30.
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Giap’s Plan of Attack
Meanwhile, the three-pronged attack was unfolding.
• Military Region I: The Easter Offensive began here with a thrust by two divisions
and three regiments toward Quang Tri. Another division attacked from the west,
toward Hue. In this region, ARVN troops retreated, until a new military commander
rallied the defenses. The crucial point became the defense of the My Chanh river.
• Military Region II: On April 1, 1972, North Vietnamese forces attacked in the central
highlands, toward Kontum and Pleiku. The showdown came with the defense of
Kontum.
• Military Region III: The attack in MR III was pointed toward potential capture of
Saigon. On April 2, the North Vietnamese struck toward the main road to Saigon.
They took initial objectives, and then heavy fighting concentrated around the town
of An Loc.
In all regions, Giap counted on a few significant advantages. One was the use of dry
roads to supply forces via Laos. April promised low ceilings—to shield forces from tactical
aircraft. The offensive was also the first to employ Soviet tanks in great numbers. According
to Giap’s biographer, the new factor giving him hope for a breakthrough was availability
of Russian T-54 and T-72 tanks.
It was not to be. Linebacker I, as it was eventually called, “would halt the invasion and so
devastate North Vietnam’s military capabilities that Hanoi would be compelled to negotiate
seriously for the first time since peace talks began in 1968,” wrote historian Earl H. Tilford
Jr. in his book Setup.
As the new wealth of expeditionary airpower flowed back to Thailand’s bases, Washington
widened the war. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson had stopped bombing the North
on the condition that North Vietnamese forces did not attack below the DMZ. Giap’s
invasion broke the agreement.
On April 2, US aircraft were authorized to bomb the North for the first time since 1968.
Nixon told his advisors on April 4: “Let’s get that weather cleared up. The bastards have
never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time, but you’ve got to have [the]
weather.”
Operation Freedom Train from April 6 to May 9 attempted to interdict supplies and
railyards supporting Giap’s offensive. On May 1, 1972, after a fruitless meeting with North
Vietnamese diplomats, Nixon upped the ante again, deciding to break the invasion.
Nixon expanded the operation and gave it the new code name Linebacker. He was
determined “to go for broke,” he told his National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger.
US aircraft could now attack nearly anywhere across North Vietnam. Authorization for
attacks on Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong Harbor came on May 8. At the same time,
Nixon reiterated a 1971 proposal for a cease-fire.

But pressure on the North was not the only point. Battlefield airpower was a mainstay,
providing fires support to ground forces and resupplying the besieged garrison at An Loc
in Military Region III. Despite all the power brought to bear on Hanoi and Haiphong, the
South Vietnamese had to hold their ground, Nixon noted.
Air control and coordination were the first tasks. In Military Region I, the air environment
could be difficult: The North had moved SA-2s into the region. On Feb. 17, North Vietnam
fired 81 SA-2s, taking out three F-4s. In April, fliers reported the SA-7 operational in the
South. These SAMs would eventually claim several forward air controllers (FACs) and
attack aircraft.
On the ground, the campaign demanded close work between US advisors, airmen, and
their South Vietnamese counterparts.
“By 1972, there were very few US ALOs [air liaison officers] still in theater,” wrote USAF
Lt. Col. Matthew C. Brand in a 2007 master’s thesis for the US Army Command and
General Staff College. Hence most of the terminal air control was provided by airborne
FACs, or FAC-As.
Could US airpower halt the attack in Military Region I? For weeks the battle hung in the
balance. Forces crossed the DMZ, moving south, and also attacked to the east, past the
former firebase at Khe Sanh. The objective was the ancient city of Hue. Between the
North and Hue lay the towns of Dong Ha and Quang Tri, along a rail and road line leading
directly to Hue.
At one point, Giap’s forces overran 12 fire-control bases, leaving only US Navy surface
gunfire and joint aircraft to support defenders. The offensive resumed on April 27, in bad
weather. Dong Ha fell the next day and on April 29, four North Vietnamese divisions,
about 40,000 men, advanced on Quang Tri.
In a night action, US Army’s 18th Cavalry vehicles held a bridge on the north side of the
city, while air strikes destroyed all five enemy tanks attacking the bridge. Then on May 1,
the ARVN evacuated Quang Tri, leaving equipment strewn along the road to Hue.
After the debacle at Quang Tri, a new ARVN commander took over. Lt. Gen. Ngo Quang
Truong used the first week of May to set up a new defensive line at the My Chanh river,
south of Quang Tri, a third of the distance to Hue. Truong also called for air interdiction
against North Vietnamese forces pressing toward Hue. Truong tasked air to hit 130 mm
artillery, tanks, smaller artillery, and trucks. In three days, fighters dropped 45 bridges
between the DMZ and Truong’s line at the My Chanh.
The new tactic of attacking tanks with laser guided bombs helped hold the line. One FAC
watched in amazement as the two F-4s he called lased and plinked a T-54 and a PT-76 a
mile from the town of My Chanh. Attack aircraft, fighters, and gunships tallied more than
70 percent of the tanks hit in Vietnam in April and May 1972.
By May 13, Truong’s forces were making limited counterattacks. B-52s and fighters struck
ahead of the advancing ground forces. The turning point came between May 20 and May
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29, 1972. The North launched a final offensive, crossing the My Chanh in several places.
But with air support, Truong’s outnumbered defenders held the line. Tactical air destroyed
18 tanks. The last North Vietnamese forces retreated back across the My Chanh on May
29.
The battle for MR I was an air campaign in itself. Some 18,000 sorties were flown in MR I
from April through June 1972. In late June, Truong’s forces shifted to the attack, heading
north to retake Quang Tri. The strongest of Giap’s offensive drives had been halted and
turned back.
Military Regions II and III

The attacks in Military Regions II and III relied just as heavily on airpower in many forms.
In Military Region II, Giap’s objectives included the city of Pleiku, scene of fighting much
earlier in the war.
Giap’s forces again made early gains, including the capture of a vital airfield at Dak To.
South Vietnamese forces fell back to make a stand in the city of Kontum.
North Vietnamese forces cut Highway 14 north of Pleiku on April 24, leaving “the
defenders of Kontum wholly isolated except by air during more than two months of heavy
and close fighting,” wrote the authors of a USAF monograph, “Airpower and the 1972
Spring Invasion.”
C-130s and South Vietnamese Air Force aircraft delivered fuel, ammunition, and rice.
Night operations helped, but several C-123s and other aircraft were lost at Kontum airfield
due to enemy fire. In late May and June, airdrop became the primary means of resupply.
Air also became the only source of mobile long-range offensive firepower for the defenders.
Helicopter gunships and tactical aircraft helped break up a major attack on May 14. Army
helicopters eventually claimed 11 T-54 kills around Kontum with tube launched, optically
tracked, wire guided (TOW) missiles, while USAF crews claimed 15 tank kills through
May 18.
On May 26, Kontum came under heavy shelling, closing the airstrip. B-52s, fixed wing
gunships, and tactical air counterattacked. In May alone, the B-52s flew nearly 1,000
sorties in MR II. PACAF concluded “the effect of air on the daily ground situation had been
significant,” according to the USAF monograph. Air helped the defenders hold Kontum,
counterattacked enemy concentrations, and denied the ability to gain additional territory.
The defense of An Loc—just 60 miles from Saigon—dominated the battle in Military
Region III. Some 20,000 military and civilian personnel were trapped there. With Giap’s
forces holding Highway 13 south of the city, An Loc was cut off.
In the first two weeks of April, tactical aircraft flew 2,500 sorties in MR III, mostly around Loc
Ninh, which fell, and An Loc, which held. Now An Loc emerged as the key to preventing
Giap’s forces from pushing down Highway 13 to Saigon.

B-52s conducted close air support. According to the USAF monograph, Army Brig. Gen.
John R. McGiffert III described the B-52s as “the most effective weapon we have been
able to muster.” He explained that the threat of heavy bombers forced the enemy to break
up into smaller units, and when they massed they paid a terrible toll.
Gunships worked with US Army advisors to target buildings and streets with precise,
heavy fire and to attack North Vietnamese troops penetrating the city. During the battle,
the garrison of ARVN defenders and their American advisors, including two Ranger
battalions, relied on air-dropped supplies.
The last North Vietnamese troops were driven out of An Loc on June 12 and the siege
lifted on June 18. By the end of June 1972, ARVN forces had returned to the offensive in
all three military regions. Giap’s plan had failed.
“Tactical air support was directly instrumental in each of the three main campaigns within
South Vietnam, first blunting and then breaking the communist momentum,” concluded
the USAF monograph.
An Air Force Historical Studies Office fact sheet summed up the operational outcome:
“Nixon’s use of airpower to disrupt supply lines and kill the enemy on the battlefield stopped
the offensive and helped drive the enemy back a short distance without a reintroduction of
the ground forces he had withdrawn from the South.” Only 43,000 American airmen and
support personnel remained by the time of the offensive.
Linebacker’s airpower halted the invasion.
Lessons of Linebacker I
Linebacker was a breakthrough in advanced air attack technology and in the overall
control of the campaign.
US Air Force and Navy aircraft had considerable success against mobile North Vietnamese
forces, including tanks. At critical battles such as the siege of An Loc, gunships, attack
helicopters, fighters, and B-52s all destroyed tanks on the move.
While political oversight was tight, Nixon’s guidelines made airpower more effective by
removing many of the operational restraints that dogged Rolling Thunder years before.
An Air Force report found, “The prevailing authority to strike almost any valid military
target during Linebacker was in sharp contrast to the extensive and vacillating restrictions
in existence during Rolling Thunder” operations, the 1965-1968 campaign over North
Vietnam. Attacks pushed to within 30 miles of the Chinese border, and later to just 15
miles. Only a few areas and targets in Hanoi remained off limits in Linebacker I.
Nixon and aides approved a master target list then left decisions on strikes to theater
commanders.
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Linebacker I clearly also benefited from the North’s shift to sustained ground combat
with large mechanized forces. This required a much greater logistical effort than guerilla
warfare and opened up the supply lines to aerial interdiction.
The sheer weight of US airpower made the biggest impression.
In fact, Linebacker I planted the seeds of success in future campaigns and became the
template for the strategy of swinging airpower to halt and deny enemy ground force
objectives. That strategy remains at the center of US policy in 2012.
Giap himself summed it up best. Although he would eventually capture the South in 1975,
he gave grudging acknowledgement to the role of airpower in battles.
“The American Air Force is a very powerful air force,” he told an interviewer 10 years after
the battle. “Naturally, that air force had an influence on the battlefield. It was a great trump
card.”

Focus On: Strategic Bombing
LINEBACKER II
By Rebecca Grant. Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association, December 2012.
The massive air campaign was hard-fought and deadly, but it finally brought North
Vietnam back to the negotiating table.
In December 1972—40 years ago this month—the US executed Linebacker II, the largest
B-52 bombing campaign of all time. The period from Dec. 18 to Dec. 29 saw the huge
USAF bombers mount shattering strikes on North Vietnamese railways, airfields, surface-
to-air missile storage sites, petroleum dumps, and other infrastructure targets around
Hanoi.
B-52 crews flew 729 nighttime sorties. Their Air Force and Navy fighter escorts provided
another 769 sorties for suppression of air defenses, combat air patrol against MiGs,
escort, and chaff dispensing.
By the time the Linebacker II campaign was finished, North Vietnam was “on its knees,” in
the words of National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger. It was ready and willing to sign
a peace agreement that included the return of American prisoners of war.
The price was high. Communist defenses downed 15 B-52s, containing 92 bomber crew
members. According to airpower historian Walter J. Boyne, eight of these airmen were
killed in action or later died of their wounds. Twenty-five were missing in action. Thirty-
three became prisoners of war. Only 26 were recovered alive before capture.
Linebacker II stemmed from the breakdown, in late 1972, of promising negotiations aimed
at ending the Vietnam War.
The so-called Paris Peace Talks between Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho had
brought the sides close to agreement in October 1972. President Richard M. Nixon was
so optimistic about the tentative peace agreement reached on Oct. 8, 1972, that, on Oct.
23, he suspended all US bombing north of the 20th parallel.
Not long afterward, however, Hanoi began to renege on its undertakings, and the peace
talks moved toward collapse.
This infuriated Nixon, who vented his frustration in a Dec. 10, 1972, telephone conversation
with Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States. (The recording was
declassified in 2008.) “It’s ... hard for me to understand how they can go back on what we
had agreed on,” Nixon told Dobrynin. “[Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev and I, and your
government, we got bigger fish to fry than this damn thing.”
To Nixon, “this damn thing” was the Vietnam War; the “bigger fish” was detente between
the two superpowers, which the Vietnam War threatened to derail.
138
Nixon pressed the Soviet Union to put pressure on its belligerent client Hanoi. The tactic
did not work. Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., the Army officer who was serving as deputy
national security advisor, brought the bad news to Nixon on Dec. 12.
According to Dobrynin, said Haig, “Hanoi claims it’s Kissinger who’s intransigent and that
there were many issues unresolved.” The Dobrynin message made it clear North Vietnam
was in no hurry to resume talks or sign a treaty.
To break the logjam and extricate the US from the Southeast Asian quagmire, Nixon
needed an extraordinary act, and he soon decided what it would be.
Nixon had already laid the groundwork for an air campaign option. On Nov. 30, 1972, he
convened a White House meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss contingency
plans. The original concept was for three to six days of B-52 strikes. The plans were to be
put in motion if talks broke off or if talks succeeded but North Vietnam later violated the
cease-fire agreement.
Nixon wanted a military action that would be, in his words, “massive and effective.” The
President added, “Above all, B-52s are to be targeted on Hanoi,” North Vietnam’s capital
city that had enjoyed sanctuary status for most of the war years.
All concerned in the planning knew that only overwhelming heavy bomber attacks could
make a major difference in the delta during bad weather, historian Wayne Thompson
wrote in his book To Hanoi and Back. Thus, Nixon believed he had one option left: to
bomb prime military targets near Hanoi—and bomb them hard.
And We Can’t Do That

The Nixon Administration’s willingness to use the bomber weapon became apparent in a
Dec. 12 Nixon-Haig conversation:
Nixon: “We’re not going to wait until the end of Christmas if we have to do the bombing.”
Haig: “No. ... And if the talks break off or recess, I think we’ve got to really pick it up. We’ve
got to put the heat on them. ... They no sooner get a concession from us on an old issue
like the DMZ [demilitarized zone] or our civilians then they pocket our concession and
reopen the issue again to get another one.”
On Dec. 15, Nixon dictated to Kissinger a five-page, single-spaced memorandum,
instructing him on what to say in a special press conference on Dec. 16.
Nixon wrote, “You should point out on the plus side that, as far as the war is concerned,
as we enter this Christmas season, we can all be thankful that no draftees are going to
Vietnam, that our casualties have been at either zero or near-zero levels for the last three
months, that no Americans are engaged in ground combat, and that, for the first time since
the war began, both sides are negotiating seriously to try to find a peaceful settlement.”

Nixon said that Kissinger “should also point out that the President insists that the United
States is not going to be pushed around, blackmailed, or stampeded into making the
wrong kind of peace agreement.”
Nixon, hashing over final details with Kissinger on that same day, reviewed American
options.
“It’s been a long war,” said Nixon, as Kissinger listened. “We have to realize that there
isn’t much else left to do unless you’re going to nuke them”—here, Nixon pauses—”and
we can’t do that.”
Nixon continued, “What else is there to do then? We’ve done everything. They’ll say, talk
to the Russians. We have. Talk to the Chinese? We have. Talk to the North Vietnamese?
We have. Bomb them? We have. Mine them? We have.”
The Linebacker II operation kicked off on Dec. 18, 1972. The US position as cabled
to Hanoi by Kissinger was that the North was “deliberately and frivolously delaying the
talks.” If Le Duc Tho would agree to return to Paris, the US would cease bombing within
36 hours.
Control of the overall campaign was in the hands of USAF Gen. John C. Meyer, commander
in chief, Strategic Air Command.
The risks of Linebacker II were hard to assess in advance. B-52 crews had been flying in
the Vietnam War theater for years, with the loss of 13 aircraft. Each loss stemmed from
an accident of some sort, save for one. On Nov. 22, 1972, a B-52D from U Tapao RTAB,
Thailand, fell victim to a SAM blast.
Col. James R. McCarthy had recently taken command of the 43rd Strategic Wing on
Guam. Large crowds of crew members packed in for three mass briefs.
McCarthy recounted in an Air Force monograph, “As the route was shown on the briefing
screen, I said, ‘Gentlemen, your target for tonight is Hanoi.’ It must have been effective,
because for the rest of the briefing you could have heard a pin drop.”
The pilots knew that, up north over Hanoi, the North Vietnamese had emplaced thick SA-2
air defenses and backed them up with anti-aircraft artillery. They were supplemented by
a rejuvenated force of up to 145 fighters, including MiG-21s.
B-52s flew to waypoints to circle around the zone and penetrate from specific angles.
Their chief protection from SAMs lay in chaff clouds dispensed by fighters, electronic
jamming from escort aircraft, and electronic countermeasures from their own aircraft.
Each BUFF carried four .50-caliber tail guns to deal with any MiG that might slip in behind.
On Night No. 1 of the campaign, a total of 129 B-52s from Guam and U Tapao attacked in
three waves, but the communist SAMs proved deadly. The missiles claimed three B-52s
plus one Navy A-7 attack aircraft and one F-111 lost for unknown reasons after its bomb
run.
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North Vietnamese MiGs suffered a loss, too. B-52D tail gunner SSgt. Samuel O. Turner
shot down a MiG-21—scoring the first ever B-52 aerial victory.
Capt. Michael H. Labeau, a B-52 radar-navigator, belonged to an augmentee crew led by
Capt. Robert J. Morris Jr., a pilot from Kincheloe AFB, Mich. Labeau flew a Night No. 2
mission from Guam. “It was not particularly dangerous,” Labeau judged. Their target that
night was not right “downtown” and “we did not see a MiG.”
Disaster struck on Night No. 3. SAMs and MiGs blasted away at bomber formations. Six
B-52s and an A-6 from USS Enterprise were shot down. Five B-52s were hit in post-target
turns.
Maj. Dick Parrish that night was the radar-navigator in a B-52G in the final cell. The pilot
and copilot saw one B-52 on fire and another explode from a direct hit. After bomb release
and the turn for home the sky grew quiet.
Both pilots took one last look out the window just as two SAM indications popped up on
the scope. “The next thing I knew,” said Parrish, “we were in a steep, descending right
turn.”
The B-52 dove away as the SAMs exploded above them.
Two more B-52s were lost on Dec. 21. SAC was already implementing new tactics to
change routes to the target. Because of losses, commanders also decided to redistribute
some crews from Guam to U Tapao, Labeau said.
The crew from Kincheloe was among those rotated to U Tapao. Labeau flew again on
Dec. 24 to hit a railroad target.
“At that time the railroads were not heavily defended,” said Labeau, but missiles still met
them. “The North Vietnamese were trying to hit the lead airplane. They were still trying to
radar-guide the missiles.”
In another B-52 that night was tail gunner TSgt. James R. Cook, who had flown numerous
missions. Tail gunners scouted for MiGs and called out evasive maneuvers to defeat SAM
shots, and the D model was best for this because of the visibility from the tail. In a mission
on Dec. 24, three missiles came up, and Cook called them out. The B-52D dove to evade.
They all scooted by the tail and exploded, Cook recalled.
Operations paused for Christmas Day. Planners and crew members prepared for
maximum effort on Dec. 26. Plans called for seven streams of bombers to converge on
Hanoi targets. As recalled by 1st Lt. Robert M. Hudson, who was a B-52 copilot on the
raid, it was the night “we got bagged.”
The size of the Dec. 26 mission meant that the normal preflight activity was overloaded
and confused.

“People were briefing in hallways,” Labeau remembered. “Targets were late, aircraft
assignments were late, intelligence was late, the data you took out to the airplane with
you was late,” he said.
Come on, Bob

Labeau’s crew, which included Morris and Hudson, was assigned to B-52D No. 56-0674
and briefed for the mission as Ebony 3. SAC kept the B-52s in formations of three to
maximize coverage from the electronic countermeasures. The original Ebony 2 ground-
aborted, and the Morris-Hudson-Labeau airplane moved up as call sign Ebony 2.
As Labeau recalled, “A lot of little things went wrong that in isolation wouldn’t have made
a difference but in combination created the difference that we got hit.”
First, their regular tail gunner became incapacitated and Hudson called for a replacement.
Cook had just finished his shift as the gunner assigned to wait on alert. All crews had
briefed and stepped to their airplanes when the call came. “A truck came by to pick me
up,” he said. “We started down the runway as I was strapping in.”
An engine fire warning lit up on takeoff. Ebony 2 circled over the Gulf of Thailand to
get the engine pod shut down, and so now it was behind the other aircraft. Everything
became rushed. Flying time from U Tapao to the target might take as little as 45 minutes.
The crew members never gave a thought to turning back, however. For one thing, they
didn’t want to they explained in recent interviews. For another, SAC had a “press on” rule,
and the Ebony 2 crew knew that dropping out would eliminate all protection for their lead
airplane.
Soon the SAMs were popping up. Intelligence reports had suggested the North Vietnamese
might be nearly out of SAMs, but that obviously was not the case over Hanoi on Dec. 26.
“They were barrage firing all at one time,” said Labeau.
“It was apparent this was no F Troop doing the aiming,” said McCarthy, who was serving
as the aircraft commander for the Dec. 26 mission.
Ebony 2 was coming in from the west and was vulnerable. Because it was part of a two-
ship cell, “we stuck out,” said Labeau. Countermeasure defenses were lower with one
less bomber, too.
Morris and Hudson watched for SAM launches. If a particular SAM’s flight path could be
seen, it could be avoided, Hudson said. If a pilot saw a SAM on the left, they pushed the
B-52 into a dive to the right, so as to make the SAM explode far above the aircraft. “The
B-52 is much more maneuverable than you think,” Hudson remembered.
Just minutes out from the target, the crew scanned the sky for more SAMs and prepared
the bomb run. However, they were down an engine, and they never did quite achieve the
planned release airspeed. Procedure called for opening the bomb bay 60 seconds before
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the release point. Local tactics cut that to 30 seconds. Ebony 2’s slow airspeed delayed
the bay opening even further.
As they approached the release point, Hudson and Morris didn’t see any SAM launches,
but they had a blind spot. They didn’t see a SAM that came under the aircraft, recalled
Hudson. At the last moment, the onboard electronic warfare officer, Maj. Nutter J. Wimbrow
III, spotted something and declared calmly over the intercom, “We’re going to be hit.”
The SAM’s proximity fuse detonated its explosive payload on the left side of Ebony 2. The
cockpit windows blew out. The radome was sheared away. Decompression sent objects
flying around the crew spaces. Rushing air screamed through the crew spaces and made
it hard to hear speakers on the intercom. Damage inside the cockpit was severe in the
extreme.
Copilot Hudson looked over at the pilot, Morris. He had died instantly.
Radar-navigator Labeau came on the intercom, saying, “Come on, Bob, we’ve got to get
the bombs off the airplane.”
Labeau was speaking to Morris, who was dead, and not copilot Bob Hudson. Still, Labeau’s
sharp comment snapped Hudson out of his momentary shock, and he addressed the
problem at hand.
Hudson got the crippled B-52’s nose up and turned the big bomber toward the target.
Labeau was able to get all the bombs off and away and then directed the bomber south
on a heading that was the quickest way out of trouble.
A second SAM hit.
“The whole plane bounced when that second hit came along,” said Cook, the tail gunner.
The B-52D rolled on its back.
“The decision was made to bail out,” said Labeau.
Downstairs in the aircraft, he and the navigator, 1st Lt. Duane P. Vavroch, sat side by side.
“We looked at each other,” recalled Labeau. “I said, ‘Get out!’ “ The navigator ejected.
“There’s now a big hole beside me,” said Labeau.
He pulled the ejection handle. The hatch below opened, his seat swung a few degrees
back—and nothing happened. Labeau found to his surprise that he was still in the B-52
with the seat stuck partway through the ejection sequence. He yanked on the black and
yellow handles again.
“I don’t know how many times I pulled,” he said, “but it eventually shot me out of the
airplane.”
Meanwhile, Cook was still in the tail. He’d disconnected his oxygen line and then blown
the gun turrets away to open the bailout hatch, but he could not wriggle through the

opening. Every time he tried, the parachute pulled him back into his seat. At over 30,000
feet, his oxygen ran out quickly. He passed out.
McCarthy, on another B-52, was departing the Hanoi area when he saw “a brilliant
explosion” in the sky. It was Ebony 2, hit by a third SAM.
Amazingly, the force of the explosion blew tail gunner Cook out of the hulk of the bomber.
He was unconscious, but his parachute opened automatically.
Hudson was also in his parachute but in trouble. The force of the ejection dislocated his
hips, and he suffered broken ribs where he had not tightly fastened his straps. His mask
had filled with blood from a blown-out sinus cavity. He tore the mask off to breathe. The
clip banged and cut his face in the cold slipstream of air.
As he descended in his parachute, Hudson was shot in the left shoulder by riflemen on
the ground. “They were waiting for me,” he said.
Because of the severity of the pain in his ribs and hips, Hudson did not notice his gunshot
wound.
The End
For his part, Cook woke up in two feet of water, coughing. He was captured within minutes.
He had suffered two broken legs, a broken back, and fractures in a shoulder and elbow.
Soldiers wired his wrists and ankles together, put him in a motorcycle sidecar, and drove
him to Hanoi.
Labeau and Hudson separately were picked up by villagers and turned over to North
Vietnamese Army regulars.
In the “Hanoi Hilton,” the notorious prison used to hold captured American airmen, Labeau
found he was one of the least injured of the new POWs. He spent the first week caring for
about a dozen injured airmen, including navigator Vavroch, Air Force F-4 crew members,
and Navy fliers.
At length, the imprisoned airmen noticed that the B-52 bombing attacks were no longer
shaking the ground. “We were pretty sure that, once bombing stopped, something positive
would happen,” said Hudson.
He was right. The air campaign of Linebacker II had forced the North Vietnamese to
accept US terms and declare that Hanoi would soon return to the peace talks in Paris.
Cook, the Ebony 2 tail gunner, was repatriated; both legs were amputated and he was
medically retired from the Air Force. Also returned were navigator Vavroch, copilot
Hudson, and radar-navigator Labeau. The latter two recovered from their injuries and
were retrained to fly the F-111. The remains of the pilot, Morris, and the crew’s electronic
warfare officer, Wimbrow, were repatriated in 1977.
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The Dec. 26 and Dec. 27 attacks marked the apex of Linebacker II. On Dec. 28, Kissinger
called Nixon to tell him Hanoi had accepted the proposal to return to the peace table and
get serious about an agreement.
Nixon: “No conditions?”
Kissinger: “No, it’s all of ours accepted.”
Nixon (later): “What significance do you attach to all this?”
Kissinger: “I think they are practically on their knees. ... For them to accept this ... is a sign
of enormous weakness.”
Kissinger then noted that many critics in Washington were challenging the use of such
heavy B-52 raids.
Nixon emitted one short, mirthless laugh.
“The main thing now, Henry, is we have to pull this [peace treaty] off. ... My view is we talk
and we settle.”
Within 34 hours of the conversation, the US declared Linebacker II to be at an end. On
Guam, the last B-52 on the last raid landed just after noon, local time, on Dec. 30, 1972.
Peace talks resumed in Paris on Jan. 8, 1973. Cease-fire accords were signed on Jan.
27, 1973.
Shortly afterward, the US began bringing home its prisoners of war.

GENERAL ROBIN OLDS
THE ROBIN OLDS FACTOR

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association, January 2008.
The famous ace influenced generations of pilots, and he always led from the front.
Few American airmen have had the kind of dazzling talent and charisma possessed by
Robin Olds. His persona loomed equally large whether from the cockpit, the lectern, or in
face-to-face encounters.
Olds was big, tough, smart, and swaggering, not to mention brave and highly skilled.
Even Hollywood would have had a hard time portraying the genuine article on the big
screen. He was a truly dynamic force, one who had a positive impact on the Air Force for
more than 60 years.
“His influence upon who we are as an Air Force today can hardly be overstated,” Gen. T.
Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff, remarked on the death of the retired brigadier general
last June. Olds was “a staunch advocate for better fighters, better pilot training,” and the
innovative tactics that the Air Force still uses today, Moseley said.
Olds’ effect on USAF varied both in content and in timing. His career can easily be divided
into two eras. In general terms, the first era, which ran from West Point to his retirement,
was a period in which his effect was chiefly localized. He was achieving notable combat
successes, influencing his peers and subordinates, and often antagonizing his superiors.
In the second, postretirement era his effect spread, and Olds became almost universally
embraced, even by those who previously had taken exception to his views.
Olds had great stories to tell, and he polished them over the years, weaving them into
his presentations with the wit and the timing of a professional actor. He didn’t mind
exaggerating the humorous aspects in some of his stories, but he never exaggerated
what he accomplished.
On the Field
His many devoted fans have further embroidered Olds’ stories, with the result that some
have become inconsistent over time. One thing is constant: This man was a warrior who
led from the front, who cared for his troops, and who never hesitated to say exactly what
he thought.
Born on July 14, 1922 in Honolulu, Olds was the son of Robert Olds, a fighter pilot in
World War I and later an aide to Billy Mitchell. Eloise, Olds’ mother, died when he was
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four, and he was brought up by his father, who gave him his first flight at the age of eight,
in an open-cockpit biplane. In his later years, Robin Olds would speak with admiration of
the great leaders—Ira C. Eaker, Carl A. Spaatz, and others—who met often at his home,
as his father eventually rose to the rank of major general.
Robin began to gain prominence while a cadet at West Point, where he played tackle on
both offense and defense and was named an All American. (Olds was so proficient on the
football field that he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1985.)
In later years, Olds told of being deliberately struck by an opponent’s forearm in a game
against archrival Navy. The blow knocked out two upper front teeth and sidelined him for a
few plays as his bleeding mouth was packed with cotton. Back in the game, he smashed
into the man who had hit him, knocking his opponent flat on his back. Olds stood over
him, grinning, pointing to his bleeding mouth and then down to the fallen foe.
He graduated from West Point in 1943—the year of his father’s early death—and months
later graduated from pilot training, with his wings being pinned on by Gen. Henry H. “Hap”
Arnold himself.
Young Lieutenant Olds was well- trained, with more than 650 hours in aircraft, including
the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, when he entered World War II combat. He flew with the
abandon of a man who knows he is invulnerable and for whom the enemy is only a target.
Olds began his sensational rise as a fighter pilot in Europe, where he flew 107 missions,
scored 12 aerial victories, and destroyed another 11-and-one-half enemy aircraft on the
ground. His knowledge of air combat grew with his victories and so did his willingness to
speak out about his beliefs—no matter how contrary they were to current doctrine. It was
a trait that would work more often against him than for him.
From P-51s to P-80s

At the peak of the air war against Germany, Olds saw how heavy bombers’ precision
attacks were being converted into area bombing by wind, weather, and enemy opposition.
He put forth the idea that 70 P-51s armed with 500-pound bombs could do more damage
to a target requiring precise accuracy than a formation of 1,000 B-17s.
As an idea, it was 20 years ahead of its time—and it ran directly contrary to USAAF
philosophy. It was the first of many of Olds’ ideas whose time had not yet come, a condition
that would frustrate him over the years, and helped induce in him flamboyant behavior
that worked against both his acceptance and his advancement.
The refusal to accept his idea about precision bombing was puzzling to him because he
was awarded many decorations. Most satisfying of all, he was given command of his
squadron as a 22-year-old major. In later life, he sometimes remarked on the strange
“disconnect” between the increase of his responsibility on one hand, and the rejection of
his ideas on the other.

After the war, Olds was placed in the very first Lockheed P-80 jet aircraft squadron. This
was a desirable assignment, as well as a dangerous one, for the loss rate in the early
jet aircraft was high. He also flew with the Aerial Aerobatic Demonstration Team, the
forerunner of the Thunderbirds, the first American jet aircraft aerobatic team. For good
measure, he also placed second in the jet aircraft division of the 1946 Thompson Trophy
Race.
He added to his high visibility level by marrying movie star Ella Raines. He and Raines
separated in 1975, but remained married until her death in 1988.
Also of note was his assignment to an exchange program with the Royal Air Force where
he flew the Gloster Meteor jet fighter and then served in the prestigious position of
commander of No. 1 Squadron, RAF.
However, when the Korean War came, Olds was unable, despite considerable effort, to
get back into combat. In private conversations, he would attribute this directly to one of
his superiors who told him in essence, “If I cannot get there to fight, you are certainly not
going to get there.”
After Korea, Olds became deeply discontented with the direction he saw being taken
by tactical airpower: Tactical Air Command became increasingly focused on the nuclear
mission.
Olds continued to distinguish himself by brilliant flying and the ability to ruffle his superior’s
feathers. At a time when TAC was oriented to the delivery of nuclear weapons, Olds,
through a series of papers, continually called for intensive training in air-to-air combat,
close air support, and development of new tactics. He also sought better pilot training,
better fighters, and surgical precision in bombing, just as he had done during World War
II.
Something Missing
Olds became dissatisfied with his career, despite assignments that most fighter pilots
would have coveted. These included the command of a wing in Europe, the 81st Tactical
Fighter Wing at RAF Bentwaters, England, where Col. Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. was
his deputy commander for operations.
The two men would team up again later, becoming famous as “Blackman and Robin”
in the Vietnam War. In between these assignments, Olds worked at the Pentagon and
graduated from the National War College. His promotions came in good order, yet despite
his satisfaction in leading first-class flying units—and despite the admiration in which he
was held by his officers and enlisted men—there was something missing. Olds wanted
the acknowledgement that he was a thinker as well as a doer.
Unfortunately, his ideas on a return to training geared to fighting a conventional air war
were rebuffed.
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His desire to remain in an active flying job was more important to him than his imminent
promotion to brigadier general. As commander of the 81st, flying McDonnell F-101
Voodoo fighter-bombers, Olds formed an aerial demonstration team and performed an
unauthorized low-level aerobatic display.
His boss reprimanded him, and as punishment, ripped up Olds’ promotion papers. His
next assignment was to Shaw AFB, S.C., where it seemed his career had reached a dead
end.
In fact the opposite was true: He had crafted a situation where he could return to combat
and achieve his greatest fame.
For the first time since his combat in Europe, time and events were on Olds’ side. The
United States was becoming increasingly involved in the Vietnam War and in 1966, Olds
was assigned to the 4453rd Combat Crew Training Wing at Davis-Monthan Air Force
Base in Arizona. His old friend Chappie James was there, as was then-Maj. William L.
Kirk.
There followed the decisive event that would foster Olds’ ascent from simply being a hero
to a few and a troublemaker to many. On Sept. 30, 1966, he became commander of the
8th Tactical Fighter Wing, based at Ubon AB, Thailand.
The wing needed Olds as badly as he needed
the wing. He introduced himself to his largely
dispirited and tired pilots in his usual fashion,
with a challenge: Olds was going to fly as a
new guy until he learned his job—and then he
was going to lead the wing into combat from
the front.
There was suspicion that this World War II
retread was just talking a good game, but Olds
soon proved himself to be a master of the F-4 Col. Daniel James Jr. served as Olds’ deputy commander
and an inspiring leader. for operations at the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing at RAF
Bentwaters, England, and teamed up with him again
The stories of his methods are legion. He during the Vietnam War. (USAF photo)
shook up the base’s support staff, putting it on
the same 24-hour clock as his combat crews. He continually visited the support groups,
finding out what their problems were in an effort to get them solved. And he was not above
tipping a bottle of beer with his airmen as they discussed how to improve operations.
He led his wing as he had promised, from the front, with flair and aggressiveness. Olds
ultimately flew 152 missions in Southeast Asia, 105 of them over North Vietnam. He
encouraged camaraderie at the bar, grew an unauthorized mustache, and demonstrated
at the age of 44 that he was the physical, mental, and flying equal—or superior—of any
man in his unit.

Olds had always had good effect on the morale of the units he led. He was gregarious, was
always concerned about the welfare of his people, and like many of his contemporaries
he drank too much for his own good.
His prescient view of the types of training required for air combat was far in advance of most
of his superiors. It was ignored for many years because it was contrary to contemporary
doctrine—and, in truth, partly because of his flamboyant nature.
Unfortunately, prior to the Vietnam War, he was never able to impose his ideas with the
same elegance that he used in leading the 8th TFW.
First and foremost, Olds wanted to kill MiGs, but the North Vietnamese were canny. Few
in number, they husbanded their resources, striking against Republic F-105 formations
when they could do so safely. The North Vietnamese were content, if necessary, with a
preservationist strategy of just making the Thunderchiefs drop their bombs before they
reached the target area.
It was deeply satisfying for Olds to see over Vietnam that all the ideas that he had
advocated—better airplanes, more training in air-to-air combat, bombing, and close air
support—had been correct all along. For Robin Olds, it was vindication.
Impatient with the reluctant enemy, Olds conceived a plan that became the single most
important air-to-air engagement of the war, and which started him into the second era of
his career—the period in which he had immense effect on virtually everyone in the Air
Force.
Calling on the skill and guile of the leading members of his wing, Olds created Operation
Bolo. The plan was elegantly simple: Modern F-4s would imitate the call signs, routes,
and flight profiles of more-vulnerable F-105s in a bid to coax North Vietnamese fighters
into a trap. The tactics worked and induced the North Vietnamese Air Force to believe that
a Phantom formation was indeed a formation of Thunderchiefs.
In the ensuing battle, seven MiG-21s were shot down, the biggest score of the war.
Olds shot down the first of his four MiGs in this battle, raising his total number of victories
to 13 on the way to a career total of 16.
A Promotion Long Overdue

After his stint in the war, his Air Force career was distinguished by the popularity he
enjoyed as a strict but caring commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy. He finally
became a brigadier general in 1968 (a promotion long overdue in the minds of many), but
subsequently was assigned to positions that did not lend themselves to more promotions.
Yet promotions were the furthest thing from Olds’ mind. Asked by Air Force Chief of Staff
Gen. John D. Ryan in 1972 to investigate why the Air Force kill ratio had plummeted
late in the Vietnam War, Olds came back with a blistering report that impugned USAF’s
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contemporary training. He offered to accept a reduction in rank to colonel so that he could
go back and personally inculcate the necessary fighting techniques, but this proposal was
refused. Olds elected to retire in 1973.
By this time, Olds’ influence was already growing. He continued to put forth his ideas,
addressing countless groups around the country, often beginning his talks with four words
that truly characterized him.
Olds would stand before the group—sometimes military people, sometimes a Rotary
Club, it didn’t matter. He would square his shoulders, wait for a few tension-filled seconds,
then shout, “I AM A WARRIOR.” No one ever doubted him.
Though he never seemed to seek it out, his popularity continually increased.
Olds continued to write influential papers on his ideas about aerial warfare. It is the mark
of the man that when technology at last reached a point where his ideas on training and
tactics no longer applied, he welcomed the change.
Olds realized that the advent of stealth, precision guided weapons, and sophisticated
command and control forever changed the dynamics of air combat, and he said so.
He also labored over an autobiography that was not completed by the time of his death,
but that would be massively welcomed by his legion of fans.
After a long fight, Robin Olds succumbed to congestive heart failure on June 14, 2007,
surrounded by his family and friends. He was interred at the United States Air Force
Academy Cemetery with full honors and a unique missing man formation. Four Phantoms
roared over, and instead of the customary pull up by the lead’s wingman, in this instance,
the lead himself pulled up. It was an appropriate salute to the one, the only, Robin Olds,
a leader all his life. Mr. Griffin Taylor published a You Tube presentation on 16 May 2013
regarding the life of General Robin Olds. http://youtu.be/RS1I-SXW5jA

Focus On: Valor
COLONEL GEORGE E. “BUD” DAY

August 2013
• Served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam Wars

• Initial commander of first forward air controller unit in Vietnam
• Seventy decorations, more than fifty for combat
• Most highly decorated servicemen since General Douglas McArthur
• Congressional Medal of Honor recipient
Colonel George E. “Bud” Day was born in Iowa in 1925. He is America’s most highly
decorated living soldier, and the most highly decorated since General Douglas MacArthur.
In a military career spanning 34 years and three wars, Day received seventy decorations,
more than fifty of them for combat. They include the Congressional Medal of Honor. Day
started his military career as a Marine enlisted man in 1942 and served 30 months in the
South Pacific during World War II. Returning home, he entered college, studied law, and
passed the bar examination in 1949. In 1950, he was commissioned a second lieutenant
in the Iowa National Guard. He joined the Air Force in 1951 and completed pilot training
later that year. He then served two tours in the Far East as a fighter-bomber pilot during
the Korean War, flying F-84s.
Day also earned the distinction, while stationed in England, of living through the first no-
parachute bailout from a burning fighter. Recognition of his experience and abilities led
to his selection as the initial commander of the 416th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the first
“Misty” Super FAC unit. In F-100Fs, he and his men flew missions over North Vietnam,
finding and marking targets for other fighter-bombers to strike. The Misty squadron flew
one of the most dangerous missions of the Vietnam War. In Day’s case, his accumulation
of over 5000 hours of flying time and 4500 hours of single-engine jet time came to an
abrupt halt while on a mission in the back seat of an F-100F, checking out a new Misty
pilot.
On 26 August 1967, Day was shot down over North Vietnam. Following his ejection, the
North Vietnamese captured him. Despite serious injuries, he managed to escape his
captors and evade through the Demilitarized Zone back into South Vietnam. Within sight
of friendly aircraft, the enemy recaptured him. He was then returned to the North, where
he was imprisoned. He is the only prisoner ever to escape from North Vietnam and return
all the way through the Demilitarized Zone to South Vietnam. Thus, he began a 67-month
ordeal that would end only when he was released from captivity. On 14 March 1973, Day
left Vietnam in a C-141, and, with his fellow POWs, returned to freedom. In short order, he
was reunited with his wife and four children in the United States. After a short recuperative
period, Day was returned to active flying status. Colonel Day retired from active duty in
1977. After retirement, he traveled and lectured to civilian and military audiences about
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the war, his POW experiences, and his book, Return with Honor. Colonel “Bud” Day
passed away on 27 July 2013, at the age of 88. Arizona Senator John McCain, a Vietnam
POW cellmate with Bud, eulogized him on the Senate floor on his passing http://youtu.be/
bxH1GnQPEqE .
Congressional Medal of Honor Citation

On 26 August 1967, Col. Day was forced to eject from his aircraft over North Vietnam
when it was hit by ground fire. His right arm was broken in 3 places, and his left knee was
badly sprained. He was immediately captured by hostile forces and taken to a prison camp
where he was interrogated and severely tortured. After causing the guards to relax their
vigilance, Col. Day escaped into the jungle and began the trek toward South Vietnam.
Despite injuries inflicted by fragments of a bomb or rocket, he continued southward
surviving only on a few berries and uncooked frogs. He successfully evaded enemy patrols
and reached the Ben Hai River, where he encountered U.S. artillery barrages. With the
aid of a bamboo log float, Col. Day swam across the river and entered the demilitarized
zone. Due to delirium, he lost his sense of direction and wandered aimlessly for several
days. After several unsuccessful attempts to signal U.S. aircraft, he was ambushed and
recaptured by the Viet Cong, sustaining gunshot wounds to his left hand and thigh. He
was returned to the prison from which he had escaped and later was moved to Hanoi after
giving his captors false information to questions put before him. Physically, Col. Day was
totally debilitated and unable to perform even the simplest tasks for himself. Despite his
many injuries, he continued to offer maximum resistance. His personal bravery in the face
of deadly enemy pressure was significant in saving the lives of fellow aviators who were
still flying against the enemy. Col. Day’s conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of
his life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the
U.S. Air Force and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Armed Forces.

Focus On: Precision Attack
EL DORADO CANYON

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association, March 1999.
Air Force and Navy aircraft crossed Qaddafi’s “Line of Death” to strike the terrorist
state of Libya.
The United States on April 14, 1986, launched Operation El Dorado Canyon, a controversial
but highly successful mission that hit Col. Muammar Qaddafi squarely between the eyes.
Working with carrier aircraft of the US Sixth Fleet, Air Force F-111s of the 48th Tactical
Fighter Wing flew what turned out to be the longest fighter combat mission in history. The
crushing strikes caused a remarkable reduction in Libyan sponsored terrorist activity.
In the mid-1980s, the F-111s of the 48th TFW, stationed at RAF Lakenheath in Britain,
formed a key element of NATO power. If war came, the Aardvark’s long range and night,
low-level bombing capability would have been vital in defeating a Soviet attack. To the
south, in the Mediterranean, the Sixth Fleet engaged Soviet warships in a constant game
of mutual surveillance and stayed in more or less permanent readiness for hostilities.
Fate would dictate that the 48th TFW and Sixth Fleet carriers would be teamed in a totally
unexpected quarter against a very different kind of enemy. They would strike not in or
around Europe but on the North African littoral. They would go into action not against
Soviet conventional forces but against an Arab state bent on sponsoring deadly terrorist
acts.
Western nations had long been alarmed by state-sponsored terrorism. The number of
attacks had risen from about 300 in 1970 to more than 3,000 in 1985. In that 15-year
period, a new intensity had come to characterize the attacks, which ranged from simple
assaults to attacks with heavy casualties such as the Oct. 23, 1983, truck bombing of the
Marine Barracks in Beirut.
Qaddafi, who seized power in a 1969 coup, had long been an American antagonist.
Each year, Libya trained 8,000 terrorists, providing false passports, transport on Libyan
airliners, and access to safe houses across Europe. Libyan support for terrorist operations
exceeded all nations except Iran. It disbursed $100 million to Palestinian terrorists eager
to strike Israel.
“Heroic” Actions
Qaddafi joined forces with one of the most notorious terrorists of the time, Abu Nidal. In
November 1985, Abu Nidal’s operatives hijacked an EgyptAir transport; 60 passengers
were killed, many in the rescue attempt staged by an Egyptian commando team. On Dec.
27, 1985, Abu Nidal terrorists launched simultaneous attacks on airports at Rome and
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Vienna; 20 passengers and four terrorists were killed in these events. Qaddafi publicly
praised the terrorists, called them martyrs, and applauded what he described as “heroic”
actions.
President Ronald Reagan at about this time gave his approval to National Security
Decision Directive 207, setting forth a new US policy against terrorism. He had decided
that the US needed to mount a military response to Qaddafi and his brethren, but first he
wanted to obtain cooperation from the Western Allies and allow time for the removal of
US citizens working in Libya.
Meantime, the Sixth Fleet, based in the Mediterranean Sea, began a series of maneuvers
designed to keep pressure on Libya. Two and sometimes three aircraft carriers (Saratoga,
America, and Coral Sea) conducted “freedom of navigation” operations that would take
US warships up to and then southward across a line at 32 degrees 30 minutes north
latitude. This was Qaddafi’s self-proclaimed “Line of Death.”
The Line of Death defined the northernmost edge of the Gulf of Sidra and demarcated
it-in Qaddafi’s mind, at least-from the rest of the Mediterranean. The Libyan leader had
warned foreign vessels that the Gulf belonged to Libya and was not international waters.
The message was that they entered at their own risk and were subject to attack by Libyan
forces. Thus Qaddafi, by drawing the Line, unilaterally sought to exclude US ships and
aircraft from a vast, 3,200-square-mile area of the Med which always had been considered
international.
The skirmishing soon began. On March 24, 1986, Libyan air defense operators fired SA-5
missiles at two F-14s. The Tomcats had intercepted an intruding MiG-25 that came a bit
too close to a battle group. The next day, a Navy A-7E aircraft struck the SAM site with
AGM-88A HARM missiles. At least two of the five threatening Libyan naval attack vessels
were also sunk.
Tension further increased on April 2, 1986, when a terrorist’s bomb exploded on TWA
Flight 840 flying above Greece. Four Americans were killed. Three days later, a bomb
exploded in Berlin’s La Belle Discotheque, a well-known after-hours hangout for US military
personnel. Killed in the blast were two American servicemen, and 79 other Americans
were injured. Three terrorist groups claimed responsibility for the bomb, but the United
States and West Germany independently announced “incontrovertible” evidence that
Libyans were responsible for the bombing.
It’s Time
President Reagan decided that it was time for the US to act.
In the months leading up to the Berlin bombing, planners at USAF’s 48th TFW had
developed more than 30 plans for delivering a punitive blow against Libya. Most were
variations on a theme-six or so Air Force F-111 fighter-bombers would fly through French
airspace and strike selected military targets in Libya. Planners assumed that the attack

would have the benefit of surprise; the small number of F-111s made it probable that the
bombers would be in and out before the Libyan defenses were alerted.
Later, when detailed speculation in the Western media lessened the probability of surprise,
attack plans were changed to include support packages that would carry out suppression
of enemy air defenses. These packages were to comprise Air Force EF-111 electronic
warfare aircraft as well as Navy A-7 and EA-6B aircraft. This was the start of an Air Force-
Navy liaison that would prove essential in the actual mission.
However, all the 48th’s plans had been rendered obsolete by April 1986. Continuous
media coverage, apparently fueled by leaks from very senior and knowledgeable sources
in the White House, had rendered surprise almost impossible. Moreover, the US was
having serious trouble with its Allies. Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher approved
US use of British bases to launch the attack. However, Washington’s other Allies lost their
nerve. The fear of reprisals and loss of business caused France, Germany, Italy, and
Spain to refuse to cooperate in a strike.
The faintheartedness of these countries forced the US to prepare a radically different
attack plan. USAF F-111s would now navigate around France and Spain, thread the
needle through the airspace over the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, and then plunge on
eastward over the Mediterranean until in a position to attack.
It would prove to be a grueling round-trip flight of 6,400 miles that spanned 13 hours,
requiring eight to 12 in-flight refuelings for each aircraft. Inasmuch as a standard NATO
F-111 sortie was about two hours, the El Dorado Canyon mission placed a tremendous
strain on crews and complex avionic systems at the heart of the aircraft.
US authorities crafted a joint operation of the Air Force and Navy against five major Libyan
targets. Of these, two were in Benghazi: a terrorist training camp and the military airfield.
The other three were in Tripoli: a terrorist naval training base; the former Wheelus AFB;
and the Azziziyah Barracks compound, which housed the command center for Libyan
intelligence and contained one of five residences that Qaddafi used.
Eighteen F-111s were assigned to strike the three Tripoli targets, while Navy aircraft were
to hit the two Benghazi sites. Navy aircraft also were to provide air defense suppression
for both phases of the operation. US authorities gave overall command to Vice Adm.
Frank B. Kelso II, commander of the Sixth Fleet.
Enter the Air Force

The composition of the El Dorado Canyon force has stirred controversy. In his 1988
book, Command of the Seas, former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. said the entire
raid could have been executed by aircraft from America and Coral Sea. This claim
cropped up again in 1997; in a letter to Foreign Affairs, Marine Maj. Gen. John H. Admire,
an operations planner in US European Command at the time, said, “Sufficient naval
forces were available to execute the attacks.” Both attributed USAF’s participation to a
bureaucratic need to placate the Air Force.
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The fact of the matter, however, is the Air Force had long been preparing for such a raid.
When Washington decreed that there would be only one attack, it became absolutely
necessary to mount a joint operation because only the inclusion of heavy USAF attack
aircraft could provide the firepower needed to ensure that the operation would be more
than a pinprick attack.
The Navy had only America and Coral Sea on station. According to Air Force officials
involved in the plans, these two carriers did not have sufficient aircraft for effective attacks
against all five targets in both Tripoli and Benghazi. At least one more carrier, and perhaps
two, would have been required, said these officers.
The act of calling in a third or even a fourth carrier to handle both targets would have
caused a delay and given away any remaining element of surprise. This fact was pointed
out to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. Crowe himself
recognized that F-111s were needed if both Tripoli and Benghazi were to be struck at
more or less the same time. They would also add an element of surprise and a new axis
of attack.
For these reasons, the JCS Chairman recommended to Reagan and the National Security
Council that the United States use both Air Force and Navy aircraft in the raids.
The F-111Fs of the 48th were special birds, equipped with two Pratt & Whitney TF-30
P-100 turbofan engines of 25,100 pounds of thrust each and a highly classified AN/AVQ-
26 Pave Tack bombing system. Pave Tack consisted of an infrared camera and laser
designator. It enabled the F-111 crew to see the target in the dark or through light fog
or dust obscurations (not heavy dust and smoke). When the target was seen, it was
designated by the energy of a laser beam. The 2,000-pound GBU-10 Paveway II laser-
guided bomb tracked the laser to the illuminated target. Pave Tack imparted to the F-111s
a limited standoff capability, achieved by lobbing the bombs at the target. As events
unfolded, the Pave Tack equipment would be crucial to the mission’s success.
On April 14, at 17:36 Greenwich Mean Time, 24 Aardvarks departed Lakenheath with the
intent that six would return after the first refueling about 90 minutes out. Also launched
were five EF-111 electronic warfare aircraft. This marked the start of the first US bomber
attack from the UK since World War II. The tanker force was launched at roughly the
same time as the F-111s, four of which joined up on their respective “mother tankers” in
radio silence, flying such a tight formation that radar controllers would see only the tanker
signatures on their screens. At the first refueling, six F-111Fs and one EF-111A broke off
and returned to base. Beyond Lands End, UK, the aircraft would be beyond the control of
any international authority, operating at 26,000 feet and speeds up to 450 knots.
To save time and ease navigation, tankers were to accompany the fighters to and from
the target area. KC-10 tankers, called in from Barksdale AFB, La., March AFB, Calif., and
Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., were refueled in turn by KC-135s, assigned to the 300th
Strategic Wing, RAF Mildenhall, and the 11th Strategic Group, RAF Fairford, UK.

Drastic Changes
What had been drafted as a small, top secret mission had changed drastically. The force
now included 18 USAF strike aircraft and four EF-111F electronic warfare aircraft from the
42d Electronic Combat Squadron, RAF Upper Heyford, UK. The lead KC-10 controlled
the F-111s.
The size of the attack force went against the judgment of the 48th’s leadership, including
that of its commander, Col. Sam W. Westbrook III. With the possibility of surprise gone, the
48th felt that the extra aircraft meant there would be too much time over target, particularly
for the nine aircraft assigned to strike the Azziziyah Barracks. Libyan defenses, already
on alert, would have time to concentrate on the later waves of attackers.
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, however, was an advocate of a larger strike,
and he was supported in this by Gen. Charles A. Gabriel, Chief of Staff of the Air Force,
Gen. Charles L. Donnelly Jr., commander of United States Air Forces in Europe, and Maj.
Gen. David W. Forgan, Donnelly’s operations deputy.
The three USAF officers believed the large force increased the possibility of doing
substantial damage to the targets.
On the Navy side, the Sixth Fleet was to attack with the forces arrayed on two carriers.
Coral Sea launched eight A-6E medium bombers for the attack and six F/A-18C Hornets
for strike support. America launched six A-6Es for the attack and six A-7Es and an EA-6B
for strike support. F-14s protected the fleet and aircraft.
A high alert status characterized Soviet vessels in the Mediterranean monitoring ship and
aircraft movement. Libya’s vast air defense system was sophisticated, and its operators
were acutely aware that an attack was coming. In the wake of the raid, the US compared
the Libyan network with target complexes in the Soviet Union and its satellites. Only three
were found to have had stronger defenses than the Libyan cities.
The difficulties of the mission were great. Most of the crews had never seen combat.
Most had never refueled from a KC-10, and none had done so at night in radio silence.
The strike force did benefit from the presence of highly experienced flight leaders, many
of them Vietnam combat veterans. They were flying the longest and most demanding
combat mission in history against alerted defenses--and doing it in coordination with a
naval force more than 3,000 miles distant.
Timing was absolutely critical, and the long route and multiple refuelings increased the
danger of a disastrous error. The Air Force and Navy attacks had to be simultaneous to
maximize any remaining element of surprise and to get strike aircraft in and out as quickly
as possible.
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Rules of Engagement
Mission difficulty was compounded by rigorous Rules of Engagement. These ROE
stipulated that, before an attack could go forward, the target had to be identified through
multiple sources and all mission-critical F-111 systems had to be operating well. Any critical
system failure required an immediate abort, even if an F-111 was in the last seconds of
its bomb run.
At about midnight GMT, six flights of three F-111Fs each bore down on Tripoli. Fatigue of
the long mission was forgotten as the pilots monitored their terrain-following equipment.
The weapon system officers prepared for the attack, checking the navigation, looking for
targets and offset aiming points, and, most important of all, checking equipment status.
The first three attacking elements, code-named Remit, Elton, and Karma, were tasked
to hit Qaddafi’s headquarters at the Azziziyah Barracks. This target included a command
and control center but not the Libyan leader’s nearby residence and the Bedouin-style
tent he often used. Westbrook proved to be prescient in his belief that nine aircraft were
too many to be put against the Azziziyah Barracks, as only two of the nine aircraft dropped
their bombs. These, however, would prove to be tremendously important strikes.
One element, Jewel, struck the Sidi Balal terrorist training camp where there was a main
complex, a secondary academy, a Palestinian training camp, and a maritime academy
under construction. Jewel’s attack was successful, taking out the area where naval
commandos trained.
Two elements, Puffy and Lujac, were armed with Mk 82 Snakeye parachute-retarded
500- pound bombs, and they struck the Tripoli airport, destroying three Ilyushin IL-76
transports and damaging three others as well as destroying a Boeing 727 and a Fiat G.
222.
Flying in support of the F-111 attacks were EF-111As and Navy A-7s, A-6Es, and an EA-
6B, using HARM and Shrike anti-radar missiles. Similar defense suppression support,
including F/A-18s, was provided across the Gulf of Sidra, where Navy A-6E aircraft were
to attack the Al Jumahiriya Barracks at Benghazi, and to the east, the Benina airfield. The
Navy’s Intruders destroyed four MiG-23s, two Fokker F-27s, and two Mil Mi-8 helicopters.
The Air Force F-111Fs would spend only 11 minutes in the target area, with what at first
appeared to be mixed results. Anti-aircraft and SAM opposition from the very first confirmed
that the Libyans were ready. News of the raid was broadcast while it was in progress. One
aircraft, Karma 52, was lost, almost certainly due to a SAM, as it was reported to be on
fire in flight. Capt. Fernando L. Ribas-Dominicci and Capt. Paul F. Lorence were killed.
Only Ribas-Dominicci’s body was recovered; his remains were returned to the US three
years later.

Adrenaline Rush
As each F-111 aircraft exited the target area, they gave a coded transmission, with
“Tranquil Tiger” indicating success and “Frostee Freezer” indicating that the target was
not hit. Then the crews, flushed with adrenaline from the attack, faced a long flight home,
with more in-flight refuelings, the knowledge that one aircraft was down, and the incredible
realization that the raid’s results were already being broadcast on Armed Forces Radio.
The news included comments from Weinberger and Secretary of State George P. Shultz.
One F-111F had to divert to Rota AB, Spain, because of an engine overheat. The mission
crew was returned to Lakenheath within two hours.
Early and fragmentary USAF poststrike analysis raised some questions about the
performance of the F-111s. Even though all three targets had been successfully struck,
only four of the 18 F-111s dropped successfully. Six were forced to abort due to aircraft
difficulties or stringencies of the Rules of Engagement. Seven missed their targets and
one was lost. There had been collateral damage, with one bomb landing near the French
Embassy.
The combined Air Force-Navy raid resulted in 130 civilian casualties with 37 killed,
including, it was claimed, the adopted daughter of Qaddafi.
Yet events were soon to prove that the raid had been a genuine success, and as time
passed, its beneficial effects would be recognized. It quickly become obvious that Qaddafi,
who had exultantly backed the bombing of others, was terribly shaken when the bombs
fell near him. His house had been damaged and flying debris had reportedly injured his
shoulder. He disappeared from the scene for 24 hours, inspiring some speculation that
he had been killed. When he did reappear-on a television broadcast-he was obviously
deeply disturbed, lacking his usual arrogance.
Libya protested but received only muted support from Arab nations. In its comments,
Moscow was curiously nonjudgmental and withheld a strong endorsement of Qaddafi.
More importantly, the following months would see a dramatic decrease in the number
of Libyan-sponsored, anti-American terrorist events. The Red Army Faction, one of
the groups that had claimed responsibility for the La Belle disco bombing, reduced its
activities. Other Libyan-sponsored groups followed suit.
Slight Praise
It became evident that the F-111s and the carrier attack aircraft, ably assisted by Air Force
and Navy support units, had achieved a signal success. Ironically, that success was not
to receive much formal recognition. There was slight praise for the aircrews. The Air
Force declined a nomination for a Presidential Unit Citation, although the Navy awarded
its forces a Meritorious Unit Citation. This situation, with an excellent description of the
attack, is covered in Robert E. Venkus’ book, Raid on Qaddafi.
Operation El Dorado Canyon was carried out in the finest tradition of the Air Force. Its
crews and aircraft were pushed to the absolute limits of their capability. Yet they prevailed,
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destroying key targets and shocking Qaddafi as a raid on Benghazi alone would never
have done. More important, the effect of El Dorado Canyon went far beyond Libya,
registering with the entire terrorist world.
Moreover, the raid demonstrated that the United States had the capability, using fighters
and large numbers of land-based tankers, to make precision strikes from land bases at
very great distances.
Perhaps as important, F-111 problems surfaced during El Dorado Canyon and the Air
Force set about fixing them. This was to pay great dividends five years later when, during
Operation Desert Storm, the F-111F Pave Tack system flew more missions and destroyed
more targets than any other aircraft in that war.

Focus On: Decisive Battle
A SMALL WAR IN PANAMA

Magazine, published by the Air Force Association, December 2009.
The main Air Force contribution to Operation Just Cause was the airlift, which
doubled the number of combat troops in the country.
In 1989, the United States decided to take down the Noriega regime in Panama by
military force. Manuel Antonio Noriega had been dictator of the country since 1983. Over
the years, he had been on and off the CIA payroll, but that relationship soured as his
corruption, repression, and collusion in drug smuggling became too blatant to ignore.
Noriega had risen in the service of Panama’s previous dictator, Omar Torrijos, who called
him “my gangster.”
Torrijos died in an airplane crash in 1981, and Noriega eventually emerged as his
successor—promoting himself from lieutenant colonel to four-star general. His power
base was command of the Panama Defense Force, which included not only the armed
forces but also the police, customs, and investigative services. The PDF owned hotels,
liquor stores, and newspapers and extorted millions of dollars through its protection
rackets. The nominal government leaders, the President and the national assembly, did
Noriega’s bidding.
“You could not buy Manuel Noriega, but you could rent him,” said Gen. Colin L. Powell,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In addition to his moonlighting for the CIA, Noriega had side deals with Cuba, Libya, and
other intelligence customers, and he allowed the Soviet KGB to operate freely in Panama.
His ties with the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia were close and of long standing.
Noriega was ruthless in eliminating the opposition. He ousted two elected Presidents
when they resisted his will. In September 1985, the headless body of one of his enemies
was dumped across the border in Costa Rica in a US mailbag. Roving paramilitary gangs
called “dignity battalions” or “digbats” intimidated dissenters.
In June 1987, the US Senate adopted by a vote of 84-to-two a resolution calling for Noriega
and his associates to “relinquish their duties” pending an independent investigation of the
corruption and political violence charges against them. In February 1988, grand juries in
Miami and Tampa, Fla., indicted Noriega on 13 counts of violating US racketeering and
drug laws. The indictments said he took $4.6 million in payoffs for allowing the Colombian
cartel to use Panamanian ports and airports to ship cocaine to the United States. In
retaliation, the PDF intensified harassment of US military members and dependents in
Panama.
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The United States had a stake in Panamanian affairs because of both the drug smuggling
and continuing US responsibility for Panama Canal security. The treaty adopted in 1979
set a 20-year transition period, with full control of the canal to pass from the United States
to Panama in 1999.
Until then, US forces were based at a dozen installations in what had previously been
the Panama Canal Zone. The Army had an infantry brigade at Ft. Clayton. Rotational Air
National Guard and Reserve units and some special operations forces were stationed at
Howard Air Force Base in Panama. About 50,000 US citizens lived in Panama, 10,300
of them members of the armed forces. The headquarters of US Southern Command was
at Quarry Heights in Panama City, 600 yards up the hill from PDF headquarters at the
Comandancia.
The Bush Administration, which came to office in January 1989, took a hard line toward
Noriega. Years earlier, when he was director of the CIA, Bush had met with Noriega. As
vice president in 1988, Bush had urged the Reagan Administration to support the grand
jury indictments in Florida. His position became still tougher after the election in Panama
in May 1989. The anti-Noriega coalition, led by Guillermo Endara, won by a three-to-one
margin, but Noriega annulled the election results. Digbats armed with clubs and metal
bars attacked Endara and the other winners. Endara, struck in the head, was hospitalized
and afterward was attacked again. One of his bodyguards was killed.
Sand Fleas
Several days later, Bush sent 2,000 additional troops to Panama, supposedly to protect
American lives and property. Southern Command conducted exercises called “Sand
Fleas” to visibly assert US treaty and maneuver rights.
In September, Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney relieved Army Gen. Frederick F.
Woerner in the middle of his tour as commander of Southern Command.
Woerner, regarded as too easygoing to handle the situation, was replaced by Gen.
Maxwell R. Thurman, one of the hardest-charging officers in the Army. Nothing had to
be done to energize Thurman. “He is mobilized when he gets up in the morning, which
is in the middle of the night,” an admirer on the Joint Staff said. Thurman chose Lt. Gen.
Carl W. Stiner to be his war planner, in command of Joint Task Force South. The chain
of command was to be simple. “Carl Stiner is my warfighter, and everybody in Panama
carrying a gun works for Carl Stiner,” Thurman said.
Powell, a principal in the activity to come, became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Oct.
1, 1989. On Oct. 3, three days after Thurman assumed command, disgruntled elements
of the PDF attempted to overthrow Noriega in a coup that failed. As with a similar coup
attempt that failed the previous year, the United States avoided involvement, seeing no
advantage in trading one bunch of PDF thugs for another.
Thurman concentrated on preparations to carry out an operations plan, dubbed “Blue
Spoon,” to topple the regime and capture Noriega. The Justice Department ruled that

the restriction on use of military forces to enforce civilian laws—the Posse Comitatus
Act—did not necessarily prevent forces from helping enforce US laws outside territorial
jurisdiction of the United States. Execution of Blue Spoon awaited what planners called
a “trigger event.”
The PDF did not amount to much as a military threat. Its total strength was 12,800,
of which 4,000 were combat forces. It had 38 light airplanes, 17 helicopters, and no
significant air defense capability. In a conflict, there would be no air attack on US ground
forces. The United States had more than air superiority. It had an air monopoly.
Almost 13,000 US troops were in Panama prior to reinforcement. The operation would
be mostly launched from the in-country US bases, which were close to the targets to be
assaulted.
Thurman’s command center was in a secure area of Quarry Heights, next door to the
Comandancia. Stiner’s headquarters was at Ft. Clayton. Army Maj. Gen. Wayne A.
Downing, commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force, was at Howard Air
Force Base, just across the canal from Panama City. The force assigned to attack the
Comandancia was at Ft. Clayton, only four miles from Panama City.
It was primarily an Army operation. The Marine Corps was ready to perform an amphibious
landing, but that was ruled out. Marines and Navy SEALs would participate in the general
assault, but their roles would be secondary. The main Air Force contribution would be an
airlift that doubled the number of US forces in Panama. Other Air Force elements, notably
AC-130 gunships, would provide strong support for the operation.
A Loss of Security
“Trigger events” were not long in coming. On Dec. 15, Panama’s National Assembly
passed a resolution declaring that a state of war existed with the United States. It named
Noriega the “Maximum Leader.”
On Dec. 16, the PDF shot three American officers at a road block, killing one of them. The
PDF also arrested and assaulted a US naval officer and his wife who had witnessed the
shooting.
As D-Day approached, Operation Blue Spoon was renamed “Just Cause.” D-Day would
be Dec. 20, with H-Hour at 1 a.m.
In November, Military Airlift Command C-5s had secretly delivered Army helicopters and
tanks to Howard Air Force Base, where they were concealed in hangars and under cover.
More troops and supplies arrived in December.
US paratroopers would jump on the big PDF base at Rio Hato, on the Pacific coast 100
miles west of Panama City, and on the Tocumen military airfield, adjacent to Torrijos
Airport east of the city. The airlift began the afternoon of Dec. 19 when C-130s picked up
Army Rangers from airfields at Ft. Benning, Ga., and Ft. Stewart, Ga. A few hours later,
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C-141s took off from Pope AFB, N.C., with 82nd Airborne paratroopers from Ft. Bragg,
N.C. Other C-141s lifted heavy equipment for the airdrop from Charleston AFB, S.C.
However, all efforts to preserve tactical surprise soon evaporated. With C-141s landing at
Howard every 10 minutes, it was obvious that something was about to happen.
US troops warned their Panamanian girlfriends to stay home. That information soon
reached the PDF, as did reports of various conversations by Americans overheard by
Panamanians.
At 10 p.m., Dan Rather reported on CBS that “US military transport planes have left Ft.
Bragg. ... The Pentagon declines to say whether or not they’re bound for Panama.”
The loss of security might have been more serious except that the PDF’s key decision-
maker, Manuel Noriega, was drunk and carousing. When the paratroopers landed at
Tocumen, Noriega’s aides rousted the groggy general and his companion of the evening
from a nearby bungalow and rushed them into hiding.
Just before midnight, a new government—President Guillermo Endara and others who
had been legally elected in May 1989—were sworn in at Quarry Heights by a Panamanian
judge.
By H-Hour or shortly afterward, MAC had brought in 7,000 additional troops, including the
paratroopers. Over the next several days, the airlift would deliver another 7,000, raising
the total of US forces in Panama to 27,000, most of them combat forces.
The job for Stiner’s joint task force was to neutralize or secure 27 key positions and PDF
installations, most of them around the capital or along the Panama Canal. At 12:45 a.m.,
15 minutes before H-Hour, three infantry battalions moved out from Ft. Clayton through
Panama City to seize the Comandancia and the PDF’s Ft. Amador and to protect the US
Embassy.
About the same time, two F-117 stealth fighters swept down on Rio Hato. They had come
from the Tonapah Test Range in Nevada and had refueled four times in flight. The F-117
had been operational since 1983, but this would be its combat debut. The assignment
was to drop bombs near the PDF barracks to “stun and disorient” the inhabitants but
not to hit the barracks themselves. Each fighter delivered a 2,000-pound GBU-27 laser
guided bomb at 1:01 a.m. and vanished into the night.
Moments later, the Army Rangers jumped on Rio Hato from C-130s after a seven-hour
flight from the United States. The base held out for five hours before surrendering.
A hundred miles to the northeast, 82nd Airborne paratroopers were landing on Tocumen
airfield. At 1:55 a.m., the C-141s air-dropped pallets of heavy equipment at Tocumen.
Noriega and his paramour had been at a PDF rest area next to the airfield and barely
managed to escape. Meanwhile, US forces secured dozens of other H-Hour targets.

Air Force A-7s and OA-37s from Howard were in the air and available for fire support, but
most of that was supplied instead by Army helicopters and Air Force AC-130 gunships.
The AC-130s had deployed in advance and were in theater as part of the rotational force.
Speaking later at an Air Force Association symposium, Brig. Gen. Craig A. Hagan of the
Army’s Training and Doctrine Command testified to the soldiers’ view of the AC-130. His
son, Capt. Steve Hagan of the 82nd Airborne, and his unit were in a difficult situation that
first night. Fortunately, Captain Hagan told his father, there was an AC-130 overhead.
“We explained our situation, and the guy [in the gunship] said, ‘Where are you?’ and we
showed him, and he said, ‘Where are the bad guys?’ and we showed him that. There was
a pregnant pause for a couple of seconds, and then he said, ‘You need to move back 18
feet.’ ”
That done, the AC-130 guns took care of the problem.
Speaking from the White House at 7 a.m., President Bush said he had ordered the
operation “to protect the lives of American citizens in Panama and to bring General Noriega
to justice in the United States.” At a briefing shortly afterward, Powell said that Noriega
was “not running anything because we own all of the bases he owned eight hours ago.”
A “Sound Barrier”
Most of the fighting was over by noon. There was no significant counterattack by the PDF,
although scattered resistance by dignity battalions and PDF remnants continued for the
next few days. Stiner’s troops were in control of the Comandancia by early evening of
Dec. 20.
Noriega hid out for several days in the houses of his supporters and in the province
of Chiriqui. He then sought refuge from the papal nuncio, Monsignor Jose Sebastian
Laboa, who granted him temporary political asylum in the Vatican Embassy. The nuncio’s
representative picked up Noriega in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen and drove him to the
embassy Dec. 24.
US troops surrounded the embassy. With Stiner’s approval, a Special Operations
Command psychological operations group set up speakers and blasted the nunciature
with rock music, played around the clock at an earsplitting volume that could be heard
blocks away.
As officially explained later, it was a “sound barrier” to prevent reporters with powerful
microphones from eavesdropping on “delicate negotiations.” That lacked something in
credibility, and a spokesman for the Special Warfare Center admitted that the purpose
had been “a very imaginative use” of psychological tools.
It was one of the few boneheaded decisions of the campaign. With the spectacle playing
on television in the United States, Powell called Thurman, told him that Bush viewed the
tactic not only as politically embarrassing but also “irritating and petty,” and that Thurman
was to stop the music.
166
Noriega surrendered Jan. 3. US troops took him to Howard, where agents of the Drug
Enforcement Administration arrested him on the ramp of a C-130, which flew him to
Homestead AFB, Fla. He was convicted in 1992 of drug trafficking and money laundering
and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Trial Judge William M. Hoeveler ruled that Noriega had been captured in the course of an
armed conflict, which gave him prisoner of war status under the Geneva Convention. In
1999, Hoeveler reduced the sentence by 10 years, so that with time off for good behavior,
Noriega was eligible for release in 2007.
Although he completed his sentence in September 2007, Noriega remains in jail while
federal courts consider what to do with him. His lawyers are trying to block Panamanian
requests for extradition (for murder) and French extradition requests (for money laundering)
on the grounds that he is a POW and not subject to extradition.
The departure of US troops from Panama began Jan. 4 and Operation Just Cause was
terminated Jan. 11. A public opinion poll found that nine out of 10 Panamanians favored
the US intervention. Nevertheless, the UN General Assembly voted 75-20 (with 40
abstentions) to condemn the operation as a violation of international law.
Casualties and collateral damage were low, thanks to an extraordinary effort by Thurman
and Stiner to contain the violence. Despite that, Ramsey Clark, former US attorney general
turned international activist, denounced a “conspiracy of silence” about what he claimed
was the killing of some 3,000 Panamanians.
Just Cause, a Template

Some reports imagined the death toll as high as 8,000. In actuality, 23 US servicemen
were killed and 324 wounded. Enemy losses were 314 killed and 124 wounded. The
best estimate of civilian casualties was 202 killed and 1,508 wounded. About 1,000
Panamanians were left homeless as the result of arson and looting by the dignity battalions
between Dec. 20 and Jan. 1.
The PDF was abolished, although parts of it were reorganized as cadre for the new
Fuerza Publica, or Public Force. The Comandancia was torn down.
In 1997, US Southern Command relocated to Miami, and full Panamanian control of the
canal became effective at noon, Dec. 31, 1999.
For a while, there was a flurry of belief among ground force advocates that Just Cause
would be the template for US military engagements of the future. The operation had been
planned and run by the Army and it used an emphatic Army approach to the employment
of joint forces. It was the foremost example of the AirLand Battle doctrine, in which ground
forces predominate and airpower was cast in a distinctly supporting role.
This notion was upset by the Gulf War of 1991, which showcased airpower and set the
model for subsequent conflicts of the 1990s. Nevertheless, some ground power theorists
saw Just Cause as a better model for future wars than Desert Storm.

Just Cause was “everything that subsequent US military operations were not: a rapid,
decisive application of overwhelming might,” said Thomas Donnelly, former editor of the
Army Times and a member of House Armed Services Committee staff from 1995 to 1999,
writing in The National Interest in 2000. “One cannot help but wonder why the campaign
has not been enshrined as a paradigm for the American way of war.”
In Donnelly’s analysis, Desert Storm was “fought for more limited goals than those of
Operation Just Cause,” and “was also fought in a more limited fashion.” The Gulf War and
subsequent operations were “incomplete victories,” he said.
Any legitimate comparison of Just Cause and Desert Storm must take into account
differences in scope and distance as well as advantages unlikely to recur in future wars.
Noriega had no airpower. The PDF was incompetent. The United States already had
thousands of combat troops inside Panama and staging bases within easy reach of the
targets. The airlift doubled the US force without opposition.
At a symposium put on in 2007 by the Association of the US Army, Lt. Gen. Thomas
F. Metz, deputy commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, described Just
Cause as “the first war of the 21st century” and Desert Storm as “the last war of the 20th
century.”
What can be said without argument is that Just Cause was a strong operation, well-
planned, capably commanded, and executed with few mistakes. It was the first big success
of US arms in many years. Just Cause broke the lingering attitudes and perceptions from
Vietnam and re-established the recognition that US forces could fight and win. That was
sufficient to earn its place in history.
168
Airpower in the Post Cold War

• Comprehend the key events of the Post Cold War Era and the impact
of air and space power on the missions of that era.
• State the US objectives of the Gulf War.
• List the objectives of the air campaign used in the Gulf War.
• Outline the key elements of Colonel Warden’s “INSTANT THUNDER”
plan.
• Identify the four phases of the air campaign.
• Describe the significance of air and space power in the Gulf War.
• Give examples of key lessons learned from Operation PROVIDE
COMFORT/NORTHERN WATCH, Operation SOUTHERN WATCH, and
Operation DENY FLIGHT.
• State significant uses of air power employment in Operation Allied
Force.
• Explain the key lessons learned by the US military in Operation ALLIED
FORCE.
• Respond to the significance of the key events of the Post Cold War Era
and the impact of air and space power on the missions of that era.
• Voluntarily participate in classroom discussion.
Airpower in the Post Cold War 169

AIR POWER TRIUMPHANT—THE GULF WAR
The U.S. Air Force found itself in a third major war since 1945 when, on August 2, 1990,
forces led by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, seized Kuwait and began a conflict that
differed considerably from those in Korea and Vietnam. The ending of the Cold War had
eliminated concerns about an expanded war and the client support Iraq might have expected
from the Soviet Union. Flexibility of doctrine, technology, leadership, and training allowed
the Air Force to adjust to the unique components of the Gulf War-a desert battlefield,
a loosely united coalition (including several Arab nations desiring minimal damage to
Iraq), and an American people strongly opposed to a prolonged war and resulting heavy
casualties. To that end, President Bush had defined the US objectives in the Gulf as: 1)
Immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait; 2)
Restoration of Kuwait’s legitimate government; 3) Security and stability of Saudi Arabia
and the Persian Gulf; and 4) The protection of American citizens abroad.
A first phase, Operation DESERT SHIELD, the defense of Saudi Arabia and its huge
oil reserves, began on August 6, when Saudi Arabia requested American assistance.
Two days later F-l5C Eagles from the First Tactical Fighter Wing, supported by E-3B
Sentry airborne warning and control aircraft, arrived in the Persian Gulf-a first step in the
rapid relocation of one-quarter of the Air Force’s total combat inventory and nearly all of
its precision bombing assets. Military airlift, including the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, rapidly
moved 660,000 Coalition personnel to the area, although most supplies and equipment
came by sea. Turbojet-powered C-141 and C-5 military transports operating between
the United States and the Persian Gulf carried ten times more tons of cargo per day
than all of the piston-engine transports designed for commercial traffic carried during the
entire Berlin Airlift. That distance insured that U.S. Air Force KC-135 and KC-10 tankers
would play a critical role in a war that required more than fifteen hundred aerial refuelings
per day. Fortunately, Operation NICKEL GRASS, the aerial resupply of Israel during the
October 1973 War, had revealed the need to equip Air Force C-141 cargo aircraft with
inflight refueling capabilities, extending airlift’s range in time for the Gulf War.
The second phase was Operation DESERT STORM, the liberation of Kuwait and the
reduction of Iraqi military capabilities, especially its nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons. The U.N. coalition opposing Hussein depended primarily on air power to
hammer enemy forces and achieve its objectives while minimizing casualties. The U.S.
Air Force flew nearly 60 percent of all fixed-wing combat sorties in support of DESERT
STORM, dropping 82 percent of precision guided weapons.
The air offensive began at 0238 local time, January 17, 1991, with night attacks on Iraqi
early warning radar sites, Scud short-range ballistic missile sites, and communication
centers, including the internationally-televised attack by two F-117A Nighthawks on the
so-called AT&T communications building in downtown Baghdad. Air Force and Navy
cruise missiles hit additional targets, including government buildings and power plants.
It was the beginning of a thirty-eight day aerial offensive consisting of four phases: a
strategic campaign against Iraq, suppression of enemy air defenses over Kuwait vicinity,
170
air attacks on ground forces in Kuwait, and eventually, close air support for the ground
offensive. Over 2,000 combat aircraft in the Coalition inventory struck all of their assigned
targets simultaneously. Contrasted sharply with the 12 sorties Eighth Air Force launched
on August 17, 1942, in its first strike against German targets in World War II, the Coalition
flew 2,759 combat sorties on day one of the Gulf air offensive.
The air war defied easy analysis because of simultaneous strikes against targets in all
of Warden’s concentric rings. In past wars identifiable campaigns were mounted against
various kinds of targets-ball bearing, aircraft assembly, oil production, transportation,
irrigation, power dams, or interdiction, but in the Gulf War such attacks and more were
mounted concurrently. Unlike AWPD planners of 1941, Gulf War planners did not have
to choose between target categories-they selected targets from among all categories.
Coordinating the two or three thousand sorties required per day was the responsibility of
Lieutenant General Charles Horner, the Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC).
He controlled all aircraft in the theater except those of the Navy in sorties over water,
those of the Marines supporting their own ground units, and helicopters flying below
five hundred feet. The lesson of conflicting responsibilities, priorities, and command and
control represented by the “route packages” of Vietnam had been learned well. Despite
problems with intelligence and communication between the diverse Coalition air forces,
never had there been such a carefully directed air campaign.
Air superiority came quickly, as Saddam Hussein ordered his air force not to compete
for command of the skies. His plan was to absorb any air blows and force the Coalition
into bloody trench warfare, in the “mother of all battles.” Losses to Coalition attackers
on the first night were limited to one Navy F/A-18. Considering the quantity and quality
of the forces arrayed against Iraq, Hussein’s withholding of his Air Force was perhaps
appropriate. Coalition air forces shot down only 32 of 700 fixed-wing combat aircraft in
the Iraqi Air Force (27 by the U.S. Air Force), although they destroyed many more on the
ground. There would be no air aces in this war. Rules of engagement that allowed the
firing of missiles at enemy aircraft beyond visual range aided Coalition success against
the few Iraqi jets rising to do battle. Pressed by U.S. Air Force attacks on their protective
shelters, more than one hundred Iraqi aircraft fled to safety in neutral Iran. The struggle
for control of the air was primarily against Iraqi ground defenses, which absorbed many
Coalition strikes. These included 122 airfields, 600 hardened aircraft shelters, 7,000
antiaircraft guns, and 200 surface-to-air missile batteries.
Never had the world seen such a variety of bombing targets and aircraft. Air Force crews
dropped laser-guided bombs down air shafts in hardened buildings and on oil tank
valves when Saddam Hussein ordered millions of gallons of oil poured into the Persian
Gulf. They “plinked” tanks with laser-guided and electro-optically guided bombs and
missiles. They carpet-bombed Iraq’s Republican Guard divisions from high altitude in
B-52s. Coalition aircraft, including more than 70 distinct types from ten countries, struck
at command, control, and communications centers, bridges, oil refineries, air defense
facilities, radar sites, alleged nuclear weapon production facilities, alleged chemical
and biological production facilities, electrical production facilities, weapons production
facilities, missile launch sites, ports, and others. There were plenty of targets. The initial

INSTANT THUNDER air plan crafted by Col John Warden consisted of Five Strategic
Rings. The five ring model consisted of National Leadership, Key Production/Organic
Essentials, National Infrastructure, National Population and Fielded Military Forces. This
strategic bombing concept of Iraq identified 84 to be hit in less than a week. By the start
of the air war on January 17, however, the Coalition target list had increased to 481,
compared to the 154 of World War IIs AWPD/l.
The most sensitive targets were in Baghdad, defended by the heaviest concentration
of antiaircraft weapons. The world press observed Coalition strikes there and reported
collateral damage and civilian casualties with special interest. General Horner limited
these most dangerous and most critical attacks to Air Force F-117 stealth fighters flying
by night and Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles striking by day and night. The stealthy
F-117 Nighthawk fighters proved most valuable to Coalition success, bombing 40 percent
of strategic targets in Iraq while flying only 2 percent of combat sorties. Their favorite
weapon was the laser-guided bomb, which although amounting to less than 5 percent
of all bombs dropped, accounted for most of the key targets. Precision guided munitions
and F-117s proved their value as “force multipliers,” increasing the impact of the bombing
campaign.
Without stealth, a typical strike mission required 32 planes with bombs, 16 fighter escorts,
8 Wild Weasel aircraft to suppress enemy radar, 4 aircraft to electronically jam enemy
radar, and 15 tankers to refuel the group. With stealth technology, the same mission
can be accomplished with only eight F-117s and two tankers to refuel them. Stealth
technology combined with precision-guided munitions put far fewer aircraft at risk and
provided the needed edge in the air campaign.
Their strikes were not completely free of political interference, however, as President
Bush made Baghdad off limits to bombing for a week after two laser-guided bombs hit the
AI Firdos Bunker on February 13, a command structure also used as an air raid shelter
by civilians. The attack left hundreds dead.
The Iraqi army mounted Scud surface-to-surface ballistic missiles on small, mobile
launchers. Hidden in civilian traffic, and fired at night, the Scud counteroffensive proved
nearly unstoppable, although Iraq launched only eighty eight of these weapons during the
war. One Scud landed in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, and killed twenty-eight American soldiers,
the deadliest single action for the United States during the war. Like the V-1 and V-2
weapons of World War II, Scud missiles caused a major diversion of sorties from the air
offensive. The Coalition leadership diverted 22 percent of its sorties from strategic targets
to eliminate the politically significant Scud missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia, but
the mission proved impossible.
The Gulf War demonstrated the vital importance of the U.S. Air Force’s Space Command.
Organized on September 1, 1982, it provided a first look at what warfare would be
like in the twenty-first century. The Air Force began launching satellites of the Navstar
Global Positioning System, made famous simply as GPS, in 1973, but GPS was not
fully operational until after DESERT STORM. Nonetheless, signals from the constellation
of available satellites provided Coalition forces information about Iraqi Scud Missile
172
position, altitude, and velocity with unparalleled accuracy during most hours of the day.
DSP satellites furnished early warning of launches, while DSCS satellites ensured secure
communications between the Gulf, the United States, and facilities all over the world.
These satellite systems were controlled through the Consolidated Space Operations
Center at Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the Satellite Control Facility at Sunnyvale,
California.
When General Norman Schwarzkopf launched the “100-hour” DESERT STORM ground
offensive on February 24, 1991, his forces met little resistance. Air power and total
command of the air made possible the maneuver warfare of Schwarzkopf’s “Hail Mary”-
the employing of American Army and Marine and Arab ground forces in a direct assault on
Kuwait while Coalition armored units looped around it to cut off enemy forces retreating
into Iraq. Three thousand air sorties that day provided air support, but found few tactical
targets-the air campaign had worked. The greatest threat to ground troops that day was
friendly fire. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme in World War I, British casualties
amounted to 57,000, including 20,000 killed. On the first day of the Gulf War ground
attack, Coalition casualties totaled 14, including 3 killed. Over the next several days
the Air Force focused its attention on battering the Republican Guard divisions held in
reserve in southern Iraq and interdicting the flood of Iraqi units retreating from Kuwait. The
most visible of these efforts was the bottleneck created on the highway northwest out of
Kuwait City, in what was called the “highway of death.” The strategic bombing campaign
continued through the one hundred hours of the ground offensive, including a last effort
to destroy Saddam Hussein’s bunker sanctuaries. Early in the morning of February 28
President Bush and the Coalition unilaterally declared a cease fire. Despite flying 37,567
combat sorties, the Air Force lost only 14 aircraft to hostile action (all from ground fire)-
testimony to the professionalism, training, technology, leadership, and doctrine of the
post-Vietnam U.S. Air Force.
With the end of the Cold War, the Air Force adopted a new doctrine-Global Reach-
Global Power. Released in June 1990, it prompted the first major Air Force reorganization
since March 1946. Under Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak, Strategic Air Command
and Tactical Air Command were deactivated on June 1, 1992. Many of their assets were
incorporated into Air Combat Command, headquartered at Langley Air Force Base in
Virginia. The new organization represents the “global power” portion of the new Air
Force, controlling ICBMs; command, control, communication, and intelligence functions;
reconnaissance; tactical airlift and tankers; fighters; and bombers. Air Mobility Command
and its in-flight refueling assets headquartered at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, replaced
Military Airlift Command as the “global reach” portion of the Air Force, controlling strategic
airlift and tanker forces.
Global Reach-Global Power and a new doctrinal manual issued in March 1992, AFM
1-1,Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, represented an Air Force
committed to matching aerial forces with changing circumstances, drawing on nearly 100
years of experience. The Gulf War, like previous wars, demonstrated that the technology,
leadership, training, strategy, and tactics employed for a specific set of conditions and
circumstances in one war will not necessarily guarantee success in the next. An innovator

behind fighter tactics in the Vietnam War, Colonel Robin Olds, concluded from his own
experience that “no one knows exactly what air fighting will be like in the future.” The U.S.
Air Force proved decisive to victory in World War II and in the Gulf War and to separation
from the limited conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. As conflicts in the near future would
prove, Col. Olds was right, we never know what the future holds. Events in the Balkans
would prove this theory conclusively.
The focus of the remainder of this text transitions from the very concise description
of historical events found in the first part of the book to a more detailed, article
based, discussion of some of the major conflicts and U.S. Air Force operations of
the last two decades. This approach allows a more nuanced discussion of how the
era of global terrorism, wide spread ethnic conflict and political unrest in volatile
areas of the world has impacted the U.S. Air Force.
174
AIRPOWER MADE IT WORK
By Dr. Rebecca Grant. Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Operation ALLIED FORCE started out on March 24, 1999 to be a short, sharp military
response to a political event—the refusal of Yugoslavia to accept the Kosovo peace plan
forged earlier during talks in Rambouillet, France. When the NATO strikes began, 112
US and 102 allied strike aircraft were committed to the operation. Thirteen of NATO’s 19
nations sent aircraft to take part. NATO’s three newest members—Poland, Hungary, and
the Czech Republic—did not join in. Greece, Iceland, and Luxembourg also abstained.
The initial plan envisioned a few days of air operations against a carefully chosen set of about
50 preapproved targets. Target categories included air defense sites, communications
relays, and fixed military facilities, such as ammunition dumps. No targets in downtown
Belgrade were on the list for the initial strikes. Planners had data on far more than 50
targets, but the consensus in NATO would support only limited action.
The alliance military campaign opened with the use of a formidable array of weapons.
The Air Force’s conventional air launched cruise missiles and the Navy’s Tomahawk land
attack missiles were launched against Yugoslavian air defense sites and communications.
Two B-2 stealth bombers flew from Whiteman AFB, Mo., marking the first use of the B-2
in combat. The B-2s flew more than 30 hours on a round-trip mission and launched the
highly accurate Joint Direct Attack Munition against multiple targets. This 30 hour flight
highlighted our ability of global reach, global power. US and NATO fighters in theater
maintained combat air patrols while others bombed targets.
No one knew exactly what it would take to shake Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
Two statements made at the start of the campaign bracketed the range of ways it might
unfold. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said on March 23, “We have plans for a
swift and severe air campaign. This will be painful to the Serbs. We hope, relatively
quickly, that the Serbs will realize they’ve made a mistake.” Bacon’s comment echoed
NATO’s collective hope that a show of resolve would get Milosevic to accept Rambouillet.
Tough Talk
The Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, on March 25
spelled out the other option at the other end of the spectrum. He said, “We are going
to systematically and progressively attack, disrupt, degrade, devastate, and ultimately
destroy these forces and their facilities and support—unless President Milosevic complies
with the demands of the international community.” Clark’s statement described what
NATO airpower could do, given time. But the air campaign had started from the premise
that NATO wanted to try limited action to achieve its goals.

How would Milosevic react? A White House “senior official” had already mulled over
the possibilities: “As we contemplated the use of force over the past 14 months, we
constructed four different models. One was that the whiff of gunpowder, just the threat of
force, would make Milosevic back down. Another was that he needed to take some hit
to justify acquiescence. Another was that he was a playground bully who would fight but
back off after a punch in the nose. And the fourth was that he would react like Saddam
Hussein. On any given day, people would pick one or the other. We thought that the
Saddam Hussein option was always the least likely, but we knew it was out there, and
now we’re looking at it.”
Milosevic ignored the initial NATO airstrikes, just as he had flouted NATO–backed
diplomacy. CIA Director George J. Tenet had forecast for weeks that Yugoslav forces
could respond to NATO military action by accelerating the ethnic cleansing. Now Milosevic
gambled that his forces would push ethnic Albanians and the Kosovo Liberation Army out
of Kosovo before NATO could react.
By the time Milosevic backed away from Rambouillet, his forces had battlefield dominance
in Kosovo. The Yugoslav 3rd army was assigned to Kosovo operations, along with
reinforcements from 1st and 2nd armies. About 40,000 troops and 300 tanks crossed into
Kosovo, spreading out in burned out villages and buildings abandoned by the refugees.
Paramilitary security forces from the Interior Ministry were engaged in multiple areas
across Kosovo.
By early April, the KLA was bloodied, and organized resistance in most of central
Kosovo was diminishing. An American official said the government forces had carried out
devastating attacks, and the prospects for the KLA were dim.
The Tactical Blunder

But Milosevic’s gamble was also his major miscalculation. His push through Kosovo
created a mass of refugees that ignited world opinion. Estimates of the number of
displaced persons jumped from 240,000 in March to 600,000 by early April. Clark called
it “a grim combination of terror and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale.” Central Kosovo was
largely emptied of its ethnic Albanian population.
Milosevic’s tactical gamble hit NATO in a vulnerable spot. The allies were committed to
limited airstrikes, with no firm plans beyond a few days or weeks. Since fixed targets were
the focus of the plan, NATO flew just a few packages each night. There was nothing that
military force could do quickly against the fully developed offensive. As US Air Force Chief
of Staff Gen. Michael E. Ryan commented, there was no way that airstrikes alone could
halt the door-to-door killings that had been under way. On April 3, a Pentagon official said
of Milosevic’s campaign, “He’s basically done.”
The plight of the Kosovo refugees stiffened NATO’s resolve. Now, the alliance would have
to win.
176
To deprive Milosevic of his gains in Kosovo, the alliance would have to use its air forces to
meet goals that had just gotten much more difficult. The politics of the situation meant that
NATO missed the chance to let its airmen do it “by the book” and halt or disrupt Milosevic’s
forces as they massed on the border and moved into Kosovo in March. As Secretary of
State Madeleine K. Albright explained on March 28, the new goal was to force Milosevic
to back off by “making sure that he pays a very heavy price.”
The first thing NATO needed was more airpower. An additional five B-1 heavy bombers,
five EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft, and 10 tankers were already en route, along with
more allied aircraft. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, veteran of Bosnia
operations four years earlier, was due to arrive with its battle group around April 4.
NATO also needed enough aircraft to sustain 24-hour operations over the dispersed
Yugoslav forces in Kosovo. Allied planners proposed an augmented package of forces.
This was known as the “Papa Bear” option, and it would more than double the number of
strike aircraft in the theater.
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen captured the new mood of resolve after a meeting
at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe on April 7 when he declared, “Whatever
General Clark feels he needs in order to carry out this campaign successfully, he will
receive.”
Now the joint and allied air forces faced a most difficult task. NATO air had to take on
the military both directly, at the tactical level, and indirectly, by hitting strategic targets in
Yugoslavia as well as in Kosovo. Airmen would have to expand the roster of strategic
targets and seek out and destroy both fixed military targets and mobile military forces,
including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery pieces. Much of this would take
place in close-battle conditions. Yugoslav forces were mixed in with civilians and refugees.
Military vehicles and forces hid in and around buildings.
Two Target Sets

In early April, NATO expanded and clarified the air campaign plan, revising it to including
simultaneous attacks on the two types of targets. Here was the heart of the air campaign
as it would be carried out over the next two-and- a-half months.
Target set 1 included fixed targets of unique strategic value. It included national command
and control; military reserves; infrastructure such as bridges, Petroleums, Oils, and
Lubricants (POL) production, and communications; and the military–industrial base of
weapons and ammunition factories and distribution systems. Serbia’s electric power grid
was soon added to the list.
Target set 2, a high priority for Clark, comprised the Serbian fielded forces—military forces,
tactical assembly areas, command-and-control nodes, bridges in southern Serbia and
Kosovo, supply areas, POL storage and pumping stations, choke points, and ammunition
storage. Initial guidance focused on forces south of the 44th parallel, but soon, military
targets north of the line also made the list.

NATO was now pursuing a multipronged strategy with its air campaign. The goal was not
just to demonstrate NATO resolve and hope to coerce Milosevic. It was to directly reduce
and eliminate the ability of Yugoslav forces to carry on their campaign of destruction in
Kosovo.
American military experience and doctrine say that it is most efficient to hit enemy forces
when they mass and maneuver at the beginning of operations. In early April, NATO did not
have enough forces in theater to clamp down on units of the regular Yugoslav army (VJ)
or the paramilitary special police (MUP). NATO air forces had been postured for combat
air patrol and flexible strike packages against a limited set of targets, not for 24-hour
operations over dispersed forces. In early April, it was possible to close one engagement
zone over some of the ground forces for only a few hours a day. Under these conditions
the Yugoslav forces could hide in buildings and move at night.
Poor weather also limited airstrikes. Brig. Gen. Leroy Barnidge Jr., commander of the
509th Bomb Wing, Whiteman AFB, MO., told how one night, one of the wing’s B-2s
enroute to the target was recalled because of weather. That night “the weather was so
bad, the whole war was canceled,” he remarked. Weather was favorable only about one-
third of the time—with most good weather days coming late in the campaign.
Preservation of NATO’s cohesion rested on several factors that defied military logic but
made political sense. First, NATO casualties had to be held to an extremely low level. The
allies came to the Balkan War with sharply differing views on the Balkan political dispute,
and commanders feared that losing aircraft could undermine NATO’s will to continue the
campaign.
We’re Here to Help

Moreover, each NATO government could approve or veto targets. In the US, sensitive
targets were forwarded for White House approval, and similar processes took place in
the capitals of Europe. “Each president of the NATO countries, at least the major players,
[are given] an opportunity to at least express their judgment on targets,” explained Cohen
in April. Some targets of high military value were never released to be added to the list
for airstrikes.
Gen. Richard E. Hawley, then commander of USAF’s Air Combat Command, spoke for
many airmen when he said, in late April, “Airpower works best when it is used decisively.
Shock, mass are the way to achieve early results. Clearly, because of the constraints in
this operation, ... we haven’t seen that at this point.”
However, the tide was about to turn. On April 23, the allies gathered in Washington,
D.C., for the long-planned celebration of NATO’s 50th anniversary. They reaffirmed their
commitment to stick with the air war. Target approval procedures eased somewhat. The
White House announced a major force increase, and now the campaign was on course
toward its objectives.
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Combat deployments increasingly demanded more aircraft and supplies. In the midst
of the surge, the air mobility forces of the US Air Force also began humanitarian relief
operations. Albania’s capital city, Tirana, opened up its airfield and quickly became the
aerial port for relief supplies and for a heavy Army force of Apache helicopters.
While the air campaign was gearing up in intensity, talk of a ground invasion began.
However, it was clear from the beginning that NATO had to keep discussion of ground
force options off the table. President Clinton said outright, “I do not intend to put our troops
in Kosovo to fight a war.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry H.
Shelton, pointed out the military reality that NATO estimated it would take anywhere from
a low of 20,000 up to a couple hundred thousand ground troops to carry out a NATO
military action in Kosovo—numbers well beyond what NATO was willing to contemplate.
The options for using ground forces never materialized.
The experience of Bosnia and ambivalence about political elements of the Kosovo crisis
made it highly improbable that NATO would agree as an alliance to fight Milosevic’s army
and special police with ground forces. Also, the Russians made it plain from the start that
they would stand against a ground force invasion. On April 9, Russian President Boris
Yeltsin appeared on Russian television to warn against NATO bringing in ground troops.
Clark did, however, move quickly to deploy Army attack helicopters to Tirana. Twenty-four
Apache helicopters plus 18 multiple launch rocket systems went into the busy airfield
along with nearly 5,000 soldiers. Pentagon spokesman Bacon described the deployment
as “an expansion of the air operation.” With their formidable firepower, it was thought the
Apaches could help in identifying and attacking Yugoslav military forces in Kosovo. A
force of 12 USAF C-17s flew more than 300 sorties to deploy the Apache force.
In the end, the Apaches were never used in combat. Two training accidents in late April
and early May tragically claimed the lives of two crewmen and destroyed two helicopters.
However, the problems with employing the Apaches had been evident from the outset.
To reach the key areas of fighting, the Apaches would have had to fly 100 miles and
more at low altitude over terrain studded with Yugoslav military forces. Small-arms fire,
anti-aircraft artillery, and shoulder-fired missiles from these troops would pose a constant
threat to the helicopters.
The Lion’s Share of Airpower

To carry out a sustained air campaign, NATO tapped primarily the resources of the US Air
Force. For the Air Force, the commitment to the Kosovo campaign quickly went from a
contingency operation to a Major Theater War. The Air Force had downsized 40 percent
since 1989. That meant that Kosovo strained the smaller force and tested its new concept
for expeditionary operations. In late April, President Clinton called up reserve component
forces to keep the air war going.

DESERT STORM had marked a leap forward in capabilities in 1991, but the Kosovo
operation demonstrated that aerospace power had evolved into something far stronger.
Many aspects of the Kosovo campaign resembled other operations in the 1990s. But
unique rules of engagement and the spectacular debut of new systems marked points
of special interest in the campaign. All along, the overriding challenge was to summon
expeditionary airpower and unleash the aircrews to carry out the missions they had been
trained to do.
Operations began with constant combat air patrols over Kosovo and Bosnia. Suppression
of Enemy Air Defenses assets were also on call. Then, strike packages, most with
dedicated SEAD assets, would be assigned to specific missions. Operation ALLIED
FORCE included combinations of NATO and U.S. aircraft and some U.S.–only packages.
NATO seized and held air dominance from the start of the operation. However, the
operational environment for NATO Airmen flying over Yugoslavia held many challenges.
Yugoslavia’s air defenses could present a considerable challenge, as NATO airmen well
knew. Just before the air war began, USAF head Ryan cautioned: “There’s no assurance
that we won’t lose aircraft in trying to take on those air defenses.” The air defense system
in Yugoslavia, especially around Belgrade, was dense, and mobile Surface-to-Air-Missiles
added more complexity.
Targets in the integrated air defense system were included in the first night’s strikes.
However, even as NATO gained freedom to operate, the Yugoslav air defense strategy
presented some unorthodox challenges. Reports suggested that spotters used cell
phones and a chain of observers to monitor allied aircraft as they took off. Many times,
the air defense system simply did not “come up” to challenge NATO strikes. “Their SAM
operators were, in the end, afraid to bring the SAMs up and engage our fighters because
of the lethality of our SEAD aircraft,” Gen. John P. Jumper, commander, U.S. Air Forces
in Europe, remarked.
More Dangerous Than 1991?

That was a mixed blessing. The Yugoslavs could not prevent NATO from attacking key
targets, but they could—and did—make it tough to completely decimate the air defense
system. Yugoslav air defenses were not efficient, but they were not dead, either. As a
consequence, pilots often got warnings that SAMs were active while on their missions. An
initial assessment from pilot reports and other sources tallied almost 700 missile shots:
266 from SA-6s, 174 from SA-3s, 106 from man-portable systems, and another 126 from
unidentified systems. One informal estimate concluded a pilot was more than twice as
likely to be shot at by SAMs over Kosovo than in DESERT STORM.
Overall, NATO did not destroy as many SAM batteries as air planners would have liked.
Preliminary data from the Joint Staff estimated that two out of a total of three SA-2 batteries
were hit and 10 of 13 SA-3s were destroyed. However, early estimates cited kills of only
three of about 22 SA-6s. “We learned from this war that it is a different ball game when
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SAMs don’t come up to fight,” acknowledged Jumper. The concept of operations for lethal
SEAD depended on targeting individual batteries as they begin to track and illuminate
friendly aircraft.
Offensive counterair actions scored many successes. The Yugoslav air force included
frontline MiG-29s as well as older MiG-21s and other aircraft. American pilots shot
down five aircraft in air-to-air engagements and a Dutch F-16 got a MiG-29 on the first
night. Many more aircraft were destroyed on the ground. In one remarkable example, a
Tomahawk targeted and destroyed a MiG-29 fighter on the ramp.
NATO also did well against Yugoslav airfields. “One of the myths that was dispelled in this
conflict was that you can’t close an airfield,” commented Jumper. “As a matter of fact, we
closed almost all the airfields,” he said.
Despite this overall success story, the loss of the F-117, known by the call sign Vega 21,
became one of the major media events of the war. On March 27, the stealth fighter went
down over Serbia. Sources cited evidence suggesting the airplane was hit by a Yugoslav
SA-3 missile active in the area at the time. Other reports hinted that the Serbs may also
have tracked the fighter optically using an intricate network of ground observers. A daring
rescue retrieved the pilot from Serb territory. Public interest spiked with dramatic television
pictures of the wreckage clearly showing the aircraft’s Holloman AFB, N.M., markings.
USAF officials stuck to a policy of revealing no details about the crash or the rescue. The
loss of the F-117 did not shake the commitment to employing stealth as 24 F-117s in
the theater continued to perform tough missions. SEAD was used routinely for all strike
packages, as had been the custom in the Balkans since the shootdown of Capt. Scott F.
O’Grady four years earlier.
Supplement to Stealth
In early July, Lt. Gen. Marvin R. Esmond, USAF’s deputy chief of staff for air and space
operations, described it this way, “The question I get frequently is, was ECM Electronic
Countermeasures required for stealth assets? The answer is no, it is not required—
depending on the risks you want to put the aircrews at. If you have the capability, then the
prudent person would say, why not suppress the threat with Electronic Countermeasures
as well as taking advantage of our stealth capability, which all totaled up to survivability
for the platform. That is simply what we did.”
Concern over collateral damage had a profound impact on how NATO ran the air war.
A key part of the air campaign strategy was to target Milosevic’s power base, shock the
Serb leadership, and disrupt the functioning of the state—but it all had to be done without
targeting the populace.

The rules of engagement for Operation DELIBERATE FORCE in Bosnia in 1995 indicated
that collateral damage would always be a dominant factor in the execution of a NATO
air campaign. Back then, NATO and the UN approved a category of targets prior to the
operation. Ryan, who was then the commander of Allied Air Forces Southern Europe,
personally approved every designated mean point of impact that was struck.
In the Kosovo operation, target approval and concerns for collateral damage became
some of the stickiest challenges for the alliance. The vast displacement of refugees
made the pilot’s job infinitely harder. “There’s little doubt in my mind that Milosevic had no
compunction at all about putting IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) inside of what we
felt to be valid military targets,” said USAF Lt. Gen. Michael C. Short, NATO’s joint force
air component commander. “And, in fact, a couple of times we struck those targets and
then saw the results on CNN.”
NATO released 23,000 bombs and missiles, and, of those, 20 went astray to cause
collateral damage and casualties. By far the most serious geopolitical shock came from
the accidental bombing of a Chinese Embassy building May 7. Reports suggested that
several JDAMs hit the building, crashing through several floors, and killing three Chinese
nationals. The U.S. apologized and said that intelligence sources had been using an
outdated map of Belgrade that pinpointed the wrong location.
Even so, the air campaign kept up high standards of accuracy. Defense Secretary Cohen
said, “We achieved our goals with the most precise application of airpower in history.”
Pilots operated under very strict rules of engagement. They were “as strict as I’ve seen
in my 27 years [in the] military,” commented USAF Maj. Gen. Charles F. Wald, of the
Joint Staff’s Strategic Plans and Policy Division and key Pentagon spokesman during
the operation. NATO was able to impose and live with the rules of engagement because
aircrew training and technical capacities of aerospace power permitted rapid conferences
about whether to strike a target or not. Often, getting clearance to attack a target required
a pilot to make a radio call back to the Combined Air Operations Center to obtain approval
from the one-star general on duty.
The 15,000-Foot Floor

Concern over the air defense threat led Short to place a 15,000-foot “floor” on air
operations. Flying at that altitude reduced the effects of anti-aircraft fire and shoulder-fired
SAMs. Aircraft could dip below the limit to identify targets. For the most part, precision
attacks were carried out with laser-guided weapons that worked well from that altitude.
Changes came from the highest political authorities, too, even after aircraft had taken off.
One B-2 strike had to turn back when a target was denied en route. Short recounted how
at the last minute, one or two nations could veto a target, causing packages in the air
to be recalled via airborne warning and control system aircraft and tankers. This played
“havoc with a mission commander’s plan.”
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While the short leash was frustrating, it was also a sign of the incredible technological
sophistication of the NATO air campaign. Controlling it all was the Combined Air Operation
Center (CAOC). According to Jumper, it is a weapon system in its own right. The CAOC
connected pilots and controllers airborne over the battlespace to the nerve center of the
operation. Since Bosnia, the CAOC at 5th Allied Tactical Air Force in Vicenza, Italy, had
grown from a hodgepodge of desks and unique systems to an integrated operation. Its
staff swelled from 300 to more than 1,100 personnel.
CAOC planners crafted the air tasking order on a 72-hour cycle to plan allocation of
assets. But the strikes were executed on a much shorter cycle. Commanders were able
to assign new targets to strike aircraft and change munitions on airplanes in a cycle as
short as four to six hours.
Increasingly, the CAOC served as the pulse-point of aerospace integration, linking up
many platforms in a short span of time. Multiple intelligence sources downlinked into the
CAOC for analysis. Operators integrated target information and relayed it to strike aircraft.
Pilots could radio back to the CAOC to report new targets and get approval to strike.
Jumper recounted how, in the CAOC, “We had U-2s that allowed us to dynamically retask
to take a picture of a reported SA-6, beam that picture back to Beale AFB [in California]
for a coordinate assessment within minutes, and have the results back to the F-15E
as it turned to shoot an AGM-130 [precision guided munition].” This real-time tasking
was a leap ahead of DESERT STORM operations. Over time, Predator unmanned aerial
vehicles were used in a similar way via the CAOC and, with a brand-new laser designator,
could direct strike aircraft already flying in the engagement zone onto positively identified
targets like tanks and armored personnel carriers.
The B-2 flew 49 sorties, with a mix of two-ship and single-ship operations. All told, the B-2
delivered 650 JDAMs with an excellent, all-weather accuracy rate. The targeting system
allowed the B-2 crew to select 16 individual designated mean points of impact, one for
each JDAM carried.
Measures of Effectiveness
The B-2 crews proved first of all that they could operate effectively on missions that took
more than 30 hours to complete. A folding chaise lounge behind the pilots’ seats and
stashes of hot food on board helped the two-man crew manage fatigue. At the same time,
the bomber proved itself combat-worthy. Using just six of the nine aircraft at Whiteman,
the 509th made every takeoff time and participated in 34 of the 53 air tasking orders
generated for Operation ALLIED FORCE. Every B-2 was launched in “pristine” condition—
meaning its radar and infrared signature met low-observable specifications, with no rough
patches to degrade survivability. The B-2 stood up to the demands of combat operations,
sometimes taking as little as four hours to refuel, rearm, and turn the jet in preparation for
another combat sortie. “It is an incredibly durable, incredibly robust airframe. You turn it
on, and it just keeps running,” Barnidge reported.

The secret new art of disrupting enemy military capabilities through cyberspace attacks
appeared to have been a big part of the campaign. Air Combat Command stood up an
information warfare squadron in Fiscal 1996 to handle defensive protection of information
and offensive information techniques at forward-deployed locations. According to one
report, the unit had its “combat debut” during the Kosovo operation and the Serbs felt
the impact. “They’re pulling their hair out at the computer terminals,” said one unnamed
official. “We know that.” Jumper said there was “a great deal more to talk about with
regard to information warfare that we were able to do for the first time in this campaign
and points our way to the future.”
By May, the USAF had deployed another significant increment of forces. With 24-hour
operations under way the air campaign was able to keep the pressure on military forces in
a much wider area of Kosovo via the “Kosovo engagement zones,” updated terminology
for the “kill box” concept pioneered in the Kuwait theater of operations in DESERT STORM.
There were enough forces in theater to cover the engagement zones for about 20 hours
a day. Strike aircraft tripled so that a total of 323 American and 212 allied strike aircraft
worked against the two major goals of hitting Serb military forces and striking targets
of unique strategic value. Air forces now attacked from all sides. Marine F/A-18s flew
missions from a base in Hungary. Strike packages from Italy could fly around Yugoslavia
to ingress from the northeast, surprising air defenses around Belgrade.
“Take Them Out”

“The mission is to pin them down, cut them off, take them out,” said NATO spokesman
Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz. “We have pinned them down, we have pretty much largely cut
them off, and are about to begin to take them out.” Under the relentless pressure of air
attacks, Milosevic’s forces in Kosovo were losing. Evidence of VJ and MUP defections
was mounting. Their fuel supplies were limited, and their resupply lines had been cut,
and Milosevic knew it would only get worse. More forces were slated to deploy, and two
months of good summer weather lay ahead. Wald said, “This is a game with as many
innings as we want, and I think [Milosevic] is running out of baseballs.”
Around May 22, the pressure increased again. Better weather and more forces allowed
NATO airmen to ramp up the pressure on the Yugoslav army. In about 10 days, bomb
damage assessment confirmed that NATO Airmen had doubled the number of tanks
destroyed, hit three times the number of armored personnel carriers, and hit four times
as many artillery and mortar pieces. “We’re driving him to a decision,” announced Clark
at the end of May.
Also in late May the KLA began its first large-scale offensive in more than a year. About
4,000 troops pressed ahead from points along the Albanian border. The KLA’s OPERATION
ARROW soon met heavy resistance from Yugoslav artillery and troops. In about two days,
the rebels were pinned down along Mount Pastrik. Heavy mortar and artillery fire ensued
and the KLA was “creamed” according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.
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The small-scale offensive reportedly helped NATO identify more Yugoslav military
equipment in the immediate area. “As the VJ and MUP fire their artillery, they’re detected,”
said Wald. “Then we’ll go ahead and attack them and destroy them.” Cohen emphasized
that NATO was not coordinating operations with the KLA. Indeed, by this time, NATO air
attacks on Yugoslav military installations and forces were spread widely across Kosovo
and southern Serbia every day and night, well beyond the localized effects of the KLA
actions.
By early June, military impact and a series of diplomatic events were coming together
as powerful coercion. The diplomatic chain of events had started a few weeks earlier,
with the G-8 meeting in Bonn on May 6. There, the major Western economic powers
plus Russia agreed on a basic strategy to resolve the conflict. The European Union
announced its appointment of President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari as its special envoy
for Kosovo on May 17. Under Ahtisaari’s auspices, the U.S., NATO, and Russia agreed
to a NATO–drafted plan in late May. On May 27, an international tribunal in The Hague
indicted Milosevic as a war criminal—an indictment, as Cohen pointed out, with no statute
of limitations. Yugoslavia’s parliament voted to accept the plan on June 3.
The air campaign was also having a devastating effect. Roads, rail lines, and bridges
across Yugoslavia had been knocked out, halting the normal flow of the civilian economy.
Good weather and long summer days ahead meant that more of Milosevic’s country
and his military forces would be exposed to devastation. In late May and early June, the
impact on fielded forces spiked.
Heavy Losses
Destruction of armored personnel carriers, artillery, and tanks continued to rise “almost
exponentially” in the words of Shelton. He said the Yugoslav army forces lost 450 or
about 50 percent of their artillery pieces and mortars to air attack. About one-third of
their armored vehicles were hit: a total of about 122 tanks and 220 armored personnel
carriers. A later NATO assessment released Sept. 16 put the numbers at 389, 93, and
153, respectively. These heavy losses meant they could not effectively continue organized
offensive operations.
At the same time, Yugoslav forces in Serbia were also feeling the pressure. First army,
in the north, had 35 percent of its facilities destroyed or damaged while 2nd army, near
the Kosovo border, had 20 percent of its facilities hit. Third army, assigned to operations
in Kosovo, had 60 percent of its fixed facilities damaged or destroyed. The Joint Staff
assessed that the air attacks had significantly reduced 3rd army’s ability to sustain
operations.
Belgrade was largely without electric power and about 30 percent of the military and
civilian radio relay networks were damaged. Across Yugoslavia, rail and road capacity
was interdicted: Some 70 percent of road and 50 percent of rail bridges across the
Danube were down. Critical industries were also hard hit, with petroleum refining facilities

100 percent destroyed, explosive production capacity 50 percent destroyed or damaged,
ammunition production 65 percent destroyed or damaged, and aviation and armored
vehicle repair at 70 percent and 40 percent destroyed or damaged, respectively.
Industrial targets and bridges would take a long time to repair. In many cases, electric
power and communications could be restored more readily. However, the combined effect
had brought the war home to Belgrade and restricted Milosevic’s ability to employ his
fielded forces effectively. On June 9, after last-minute wrangling with Yugoslav military
commanders, Milosevic accepted the NATO conditions. “I think it was the total weight of
our effort that finally got to him,” said Short, the allied air commander.
The 78-day air campaign brought about an ending that seemed almost impossible back
in March. Milosevic agreed to a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo,
the entry of an international peacekeeping force, the return of refugees, and Kosovar
autonomy within Yugoslavia. Kosovo would remain within the sovereignty of Yugoslavia.
However, the international peacekeeping force would be armed and empowered.
Military historian John Keegan wrote with some awe, “Now, there is a new date to fix on
the calendar: June 3, 1999, when the capitulation of President Milosevic proved that a
war can be won by airpower alone.”
While the entire decade of the 1990’s saw the USAF engaged in near constant combat
operations, including DESERT STORM, NORTHERN and SOUTHERN WATCH, and
finally ALLIED FORCE, the service was still unprepared to deal with the most devastating
attack ever seen on the U.S. mainland.
186
HORNER’S ANXIOUS MOMENTS
Reprinted by permission from Air Force Magazine, published by

the Air Force Association.
It was only a few months after the smashing US victory in the first Gulf War. Then-Lt.
Gen. Charles A. Horner, the “air boss” of Operation Desert Storm under Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf, gave an eye-opening insider account of the conflict. To the outsider, the
triumph over the forces of Saddam Hussein seemed like a walkover; for Horner and
others who were there, it was anything but. Horner recalled the aftermath of the Aug. 2,
1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as “some of the worst nights of my life,” as he and others
pondered the ease with which Saddam could have seized Saudi oil fields. Horner and his
top aide, then Brig. Gen. Buster C. Glosson, worried mightily about whether the F-117
stealth aircraft would survive. In short, Horner had sweated it out—more than anyone
knew.
There was no certainty that Iraq would not continue its attack. There were no military
forces other than some light Saudi National Guard units between him and the oil fields at
Abqaiq, the oil production at Al-Jubail. And so it was a very tense, serious situation.
The buildup went very rapidly. The idea was we were to deter an Iraqi invasion of Saudi
Arabia, and if an invasion did come, we had to be prepared to defend. General Schwarzkopf
flew back to the States to push the forces over [and] left me over there to receive them,
and we flew up to Riyadh and set up the headquarters.
Those were some of the worst nights in my life, because I had good information as to
what the Iraqi threat was, and quite frankly, we could not have issued speeding tickets to
the tanks as they would have come rolling down the interstate highway on the east coast.
It was an opportunity the Iraqis did not take, but every night, we’d get more forces, and
we’d sit down and get a game plan of what we’d do if we came under attack.
The first forces deployed were air defense forces. We brought F-15s. The Saudi Air Force
was flying their AWACS and their F-15s, so we just fell in on their operations and had a
more robust air defense as we went along.
Next, we brought in air-to-ground aircraft, and the role of these systems [was] we were
going to trade space for time, if he attacked, and we would attack the forces, meanwhile
falling back as far as the United Arab Emirates. The 82nd Airborne showed up very light,
would not have been able to forestall the tanks, but would have given us the means to
delay the onslaught. We brought in A-10s, the Marine Corps arrived, and of course, the
carriers arrived in the Gulf.

Later, we were able to add more heavy forces, and the point where the issue is no longer
really in doubt was when we got the 24th Infantry Division there with their tanks. Then we
knew we could defend the Port of Dammam, which is just across from Bahrain, and that
would allow us to bring our forces on board.
As we went on, in October and November, it became obvious that Iraq was not interested
in negotiation and that at some point in time, there would be a decision made to eject them,
and that’s when the briefing was brought to the president of the strategic air campaign.
The decision on when to attack obviously, given the cutoff date of Jan. 15 that came from
the UN resolution, was made based on moonlight and weather. We wanted as dark a
night as possible, because [of] the F-117, the stealth fighter going into Baghdad. And we
wanted good weather obviously for air operations. The 16th was picked, 3 o’clock in the
morning our time.
We had the first two days of the war mapped out in detail; I mean, we knew each target,
each sortie, what time it hit, where it refueled, what country would fly the sortie, what
munitions—and all the detail was there. I would not let them prepare a third day. I said
we have to learn how to manage chaos, because that’s what war is, it’s chaos. And so
the first day of the war, while the nation was watching the bombs fall, the Black Hole guys
came out of the Black Hole, and all the staff got to work and started planning for the third
day, and using the intelligence inputs that we could generate.
I guess the biggest thing I worried about was loss of friendly aircraft. We had stealth
technology, we had a lot of technical data about stealth technology, but I had no way of
knowing that we wouldn’t lose the entire fleet the first night. Those boys were going in
there naked, all alone. We were betting everything on the data. As it turned out, they flew
every night and we did not suffer any battle damage to any of the F-117 aircraft, but that
had to be a big lump in my throat right there, as I watched them go over Baghdad the first
two nights.
And I think you all saw on television the vast amounts of ground fire. My intelligence
people told me that Baghdad was twice as heavily defended as any other target in the
Soviet Union or in Eastern Europe. And I can believe it, looking at all the SAM sites and
the guns on every building. So that paid off, but we had no way of knowing. We had no
way of knowing how well our ECM [electronic countermeasures] would work because
those are things you don’t practice in peace.
We wanted to seize control of the air so we could do all of the other things. And that’s a
very individualistic thing. And your training comes to bear as much as your equipment
and the courage of your pilots, and the robustness of your command and control. And so
I worried about that.
There were a lot of questions about losses—what did you anticipate and what did you
have—so on and so forth. Buster and I, about two days before the war started, we were
sitting in the command center, and he said, what do you think the losses are going to be?
And I wrote 39 down on a piece of paper. That meant I thought we’d lose 39 aircraft. As it
188
was, we lost, I believe the number is about 41. ... I’d like to take credit for being brilliant.
Actually, when I wrote 39 down, I thought we were going to lose 39 USAF aircraft. And in
fact, I expected our [coalition] losses to be nearly 100 airplanes.

GENERAL CHARLES A. HORNER
• As JFACC for Operation Desert Shield/Storm he commanded all air operations

in the Gulf War.
• Flew 1 2 F-105 combat missions over North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Gen Charles Horner received his Air Force commission in 1958 from the Reserve Officer
Training Corps (ROTC) program at the University of Iowa. During the Vietnam War he flew
41 combat missions over North Vietnam in F-105 fighters and an additional 71 combat
missions in F-105 Wild Weasel aircraft, hunting down North Vietnamese air defenses.
During his distinguished operational career he commanded a tactical training wing, a
fighter wing, two air divisions, a numbered Air Force, and served as commander in chief of
the North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Space Command. He is best
known for his five years as commander of 9th US Air Force and US Central Command
Air Forces (1987–92) and particularly his command of air operations during the Gulf War
(1991).
During the Gulf War General Horner served as joint force air component commander
(JFACC) commanding all coalition air operations. In this capacity he managed the
enormously complicated air portion of Operation Desert Storm, employing more than
2,600 aircraft from 11 countries. General Horner’s leadership helped produce one of the
most rapid and devastating air campaigns in military history. This campaign not only wiped
out the Iraqi air force and air defenses but also destroyed some of the Iraqi infrastructure
for building chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and large parts of the Iraqi army.
The campaign disrupted Iraqi command and control so effectively that at the surrender
negotiations, the US representatives had to tell the Iraqi generals where the Iraqi troops
were. Most impressively, Horner accomplished all this in just over 40 days at a cost of only
42 coalition aircraft against very powerful and experienced Iraqi forces.
After his retirement in 1994, General Horner has lectured, consulted, and written
extensively on defense matters including a book on the Gulf War, Every Man a Tiger,
which he coauthored with Tom Clancy.
190
THE PRESENTATION OF A LIFE TIME
Col. John Warden was a brilliant war time planner. His innovative thoughts and ideas on the
employment of precision weaponry made him the perfect choice to head the Pentagon’s
Checkmate Staff in planning the Air Campaign for “Operation DESERT STORM.” Col.
Warden used his Five Concentric Rings model to develop a proposed air campaign and
presented it to the CENTCOM Commander, Gen Norman Schwarzkopf. Gen Schwarzkopf
had some concerns about Col. Warden’s plan in that it was Air Force Centric and didn’t
adequately address the ground threat posed by the Iraqi Army. At that time, the Iraqi Army
was considered to be the fourth largest Army in the world and was battle hardened after
the eight year long Iran – Iraq war that ended in 1988. After expressing these concerns
to Col. Warden, Gen Schwarzkopf sent him to brief the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Gen Colin Powell. After listening to Col. Wardens plan, Gen Powell expressed the
same concerns regarding the Iraqi ground forces. Col. Warden then revised his plan to
address Gen Powell’s & Gen Schwarzkopf’s concerns about the Iraqi ground forces. After
another review of the plan, Gen Schwarzkopf sent Col. Warden and his team to Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia to brief the Combined Air Operation Center Commander, Lt. Gen Horner.
The CENTAF Staff was eager to hear Col. Warden’s plan and Lt. Gen Horner made
an immediate hole in the schedule so his staff could learn of the air campaign plan.
Unfortunately the briefing started off on the wrong foot when Col. Warden failed to take
into account the experience level and theater familiarity of Lt. Gen Horner’s staff. Col.
Warden basically delivered the same briefing he had presented to Gen Powell and Gen
Schwarzkopf that focused on Iraqi culture and his theory of air power employment. Lt.
Gen Horner became very impatient with Col. Warden and encouraged him to get into
the main points of his brief. Although he was shaken by the general’s sharp words,
Col. Warden continued with his scientific approach to the presentation which failed to
adequately address the tactical level details of the campaign. As Lt. Gen Horner continued
to inquire about campaign specifics, Col. Warden continued to espouse his air power
theories regarding the employment of precision weapons. Frustrated with direction of
the briefing, Lt. Gen Horner fired Col. Warden on the spot, sent him back to the United
States, and had his deputy, Lt. Col. Deptula finish the presentation. Fortunately, Lt. Col.
Deptula impressed Lt. Gen Horner by successfully articulating the plan from a flyer’s
perspective. While Col. Warden returned to the US to serve in a support role for the
war planning strategy, the majority of his theories were actively incorporated into the
“DESERT STORM” Air Campaign.
Col. Warden’s theories on effects based weapons versus actual battlefield tactics went
on to shape 21st Century air warfare concepts. As a result of his expertise, Col. Warden
went on to serve as the Special Assistant for Policy Studies and National Security Studies
to the Vice President of the United States. Additionally he was selected to serve as the
Commandant of the Air Command and Staff College, where his concepts of focusing on
the real objectives of war resulted in sweeping changes in Officer Professional Military
Education. These changes earned him a reputation as one of the most brilliant minds of

modern warfare and the school received numerous official honors including the “General
Muir S. Fairchild Educational Achievement Award.” Col. Warden published over 10
articles and books for the United States Air Force on modern warfare tactics.
192
COLONEL JOHN W. WARDEN, III
• Created the “Five Rings” model of enemy systems and “Inside-out” warfare.
• Developed the original draft for the “Instant Thunder” plan for the air campaign in
the Gulf War.
• Reinvigorated the Air Command and Staff College and Airpower Theory throughout
the Air Force.
John Warden had a full operational career including 266 combat missions in Vietnam
as Forward Air Control pilot flying OV-10s and flying and command assignments in F-4
and F-15C units culminating in command of a F-15C Fighter Wing. He is best known,
however, as one of the leading airpower theorists of the late twentieth-century and as the
guiding light behind the Gulf War air campaign.
Colonel Warden’s extensive writings contain many original, provocative, and influential
ideas and he continues to be a prolific author and speaker. One of his simplest and most
influential ideas is that he enemy (whether a nation or a drug cartel) can be thought of as
a system consisting of five concentric rings: leadership, system essentials, infrastructure,
population, and fielded military forces. The most important ring, leadership, is at the
center and fielded military forces are on the outside protecting all the others (see figure).
Airpower is uniquely capable of attacking any of these rings and is most effective when
used against the most important inner rings rather than the less important outer rings.
Attacking the inner rings and then working outward is sometimes called “inside-out”
warfare. This idea was at the core of the air plane Warden and his subordinates on the Air
Staff drafted for the Gulf War. The plan as ultimately executed was enormously successful
in paralyzing the Iraqi leadership and infrastructure before moving on to cripple the Iraqi
ground forces which were finished off by the ground invasion.

Focus On:
POLICING POSTWAR IRAQ (1992-2001)
The Gulf War drove Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait and weakened him
dramatically and this prompted rebel-lions in March 1991 by ethnic Kurds in northern
Iraq and the Shiite religious group in southern Iraq. The rebels, however, were not well
equipped and the international community did not support their efforts to break away
from Iraq because that would have further destabilized the already unstable Middle East.
Without international military support the rebels were too weak to face the Iraqi army and
they were soon defeated.
The defeat of the Kurdish forces in the north created a massive refugee problem as more
than a million Kurds fled their homes to escape violent reprisals by the Iraqi army. The
United States and the United Nations responded to this humanitarian crisis with Operation
Provide Comfort in April 1991. In order to stabilize the situation, US and coalition forces
launched an airlift to deliver relief supplies and used ground forces to establish a ground
security zone in northern Iraq and refugee camps in northern Iraq and southern Turkey
to facilitate distribution of supplies. What made these efforts possible was coalition air
supremacy.
The ground security zone (where no Iraqi troops were allowed) and the “no-fly” zone
(where no Iraqi aircraft were allowed) made it safe for the Kurds to return to their homes
and by the end of May almost all of the refugees had returned and by mid-July the coalition
ground forces had withdrawn from Iraq. The United States continued to maintain the
no-fly zone ever since and in recognition of the end of the transition from a humanitarian
mission to one of monitoring Iraqi airspace, Operation Provide Comfort was replaced by
Operation Northern Watch at the beginning of 1997.
Shortly after the Gulf War, the Iraqi army put down a rebellion by Shiite Moslems in
southern Iraq and the repression there was so severe that the United Nations adopted
a resolution to protect them from Iraqi air attack. In August 1992 the United States
announced a no-fly zone over southern Iraq. Maintenance of the southern no-fly zone
has been the task of Operation Southern Watch ever since. In October 1994, in response
to Iraqi troop movements that threatened another invasion of Kuwait, the United States
declared the southern no-fly zone a no-fly/no-drive zone. In 1996, in response to renewed
Iraqi attacks on the Kurds, the United States expanded the southern no-fly zone and
launched extensive attacks (Operation Desert Strike) to destroy Iraqi air defenses in the
new patrol areas.
Since the completion of the airlift and humanitarian relief phases of Operation Provide
Comfort, US and coalition efforts focused on continuous intelligence gathering, surveillance,
and reconnaissance over Iraq. These efforts put a heavy strain on E-3, RC-135, and their
surveillance aircraft and units but also produced some dramatic successes. In counterair
194
operations the most notable victories were the downing of an Iraqi MiG-25 in December
of 1992 by a US F-16 assigned to Southern Watch and the downing of an Iraqi MiG-29 n
January 1993 by a US F-16 assigned to Provide Comfort.
The most dramatic impact of operations was in strategic attack. When the Iraqi’s continued
to block UN inspectors trying to dismantle Iraq’s missile and weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) programs, the United States and United Kingdom launched a four-night series of
attacks against roughly 100 strategic military targets in Iraq. These attacks in December
1998 (Operation Desert Fox) struck Iraq’s military through destruction of air defense,
command and control facilities, and air bases. Oil facilities used by Iraq to evade UN
economic sanctions were also attacked. Most importantly, though the Iraqis could keep
inspectors out of their missile and WMD sites, they could not defend the sites from air and
missile attacks, so Desert Fox shut them down. In addition to F-15, F-16, F-117, A-10,
and B-52, the strike missions during Desert Fox witnessed the combat debut of the B-1B.
Though the Iraqis did not shoot down any coalition aircraft during our operations against
Iraq after the Gulf War, these missions were not cost-free. Two tragedies (the accidental
shoot-down of two US Army helicopters over northern Iraq by USAF fighters and the death
of 19 US Airmen in a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia) reminded us of the difficulties and
dangers of operations. Both of these events have led to improvements in US operations
to prevent a repetition. The demands of 11 years of operations against Iraq and the end
of the Cold War have led to a major reorganization of the US Air Force into Aerospace
Expeditionary Forces.
Gen Ronald R. Fogleman, then Air Force Chief of Staff, summed up our postwar operations
over Iraq nicely when he said that “What we have effectively done since 1992 is conduct
an air occupation of a country.”

GENERAL MERRILL A. MCPEAK
• Radically reorganized the USAF to meet new post-Cold War challenges.

• USAF Chief of Staff during the Gulf War.
• Leading advocate of the “Composite Wing.”
Merrill McPeak was commissioned in 1957 from the ROTC program at San Diego State
College. He was a demonstration pilot in the US Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron
(Thunderbirds) for two years before going to Vietnam where he fought as an attack pilot
and a forward air controller. He went on to command a wing, a numbered Air Force, and
Pacific Air Force before being named Chief of Staff of the US Air Force in late 1990.
Appointed unexpectedly on the eve of the Gulf War, General McPeak immediately guided
the Air Force through Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the largest airlift and
largest air war in decades.
After the triumph of the Gulf War, General McPeak became perhaps the most controversial
Chief of Staff in Air Force history. He pushed the Air Force through the most extensive
reorganizations it had ever experienced. The most visible change was that he scrapped
the old three-part Air Force structure of Tactical Air Command (TAC), Strategic Air
Command (SAC), and Military Airlift Command (MAC). The new Air Force organization
fit better with the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act and was the critical
first step in reshaping the Air Force to meet the needs of the post–Cold War era. He was
also a leading advocate for the Composite Wing concept that combined several different
aircraft types in a single air wing.
Not everyone welcomed the changes General McPeak made in the Air Force, but he
was not deterred by criticism or opposition from following the path he felt was best for
the service. Oddly enough, he received more vociferous criticism for his ill-fated efforts
to change Air Force uniforms than for the enormous changes he made in the way we do
business.
196
Airpower in the 21st Century

• Comprehend the background causes for the Global War on Terror
(GWOT) and the importance of lessons learned from Operations
ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF), IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF), and NEW DAWN.
• State how the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 changed U.S.
Policy.
• State the objectives of OEF according to the Secretary of Defense.
• Explain how air and space power contributed to mussion success in
OEF and OIF.
• Identify the emerging military lessons from OEF and OIF.
• Identify the definitive conclusions drawn about air and space power
from OIF.
• Respond to the impact the GWOT is having on the evolution of air and
space power.
• Voluntarily participate in classroom discussion.
Airpower in the 21st Century 197

A word about the following readings:
These articles must be viewed in the context of the time they were
written. If you read an article about WWII you would expect it to be old.
As we move further away from OEF and OIF they become of historical
nature. We will make every effort to provide articles that provide current
status of ongoing operations while maintaining the older articles that
provide time specific perspective; otherwise we will lose the history
and become focused on current events only.*
Focus On:
DESERT TRIUMPH
By John A. Tirpak. Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Only three weeks after launching the invasion of Iraq, coalition forces found themselves in
control of most of Baghdad and battling remnants of shattered Republican Guard divisions
and irregulars in the city. U.S.-led ground forces had raced 300 miles from Kuwait to the
capital, their path opened up by devastating combat airpower that had shifted back and
forth between fixed strategic targets and mobile enemy forces in the field.
On April 9, U.S. Central Command reported that Iraqi forces no longer seemed to be
under any kind of central control.
With an emphasis on speed, flexibility, rapid maneuver of ground forces, surgical strikes,
and information operations, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF) was in many ways a
demonstration of the “transformational” concepts and technologies championed by the
Pentagon leadership.
There are several definitive conclusions we can draw about what happened in Iraq, a few
of those themes were prominent:
• It now appears that relatively small but highly mobile ground forces can meet and
defeat a larger, entrenched defender, provided the U.S. first establishes and then
ruthlessly exploits air and space dominance.
• Information dominance—achieved in large part by a fleet of spacecraft and sensor
aircraft roaming the battle space at will—coupled with highly precise, real-time,
informed targeting by massive numbers of aircraft, led to rapid victory on the
ground.
• OIF showed that a prolonged air war as a set-piece prelude to ground action is not
always necessary and that air and space power can indeed be extremely effective
in helping ground forces wage urban warfare without inflicting massive collateral
damage on civilians.
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• Information operations—ranging from dispersal of leaflets to computer network
attack—can sharply reduce the need for kinetic weapons.
Gulf War II had all the hallmarks of an “effects-based operation”—speed, precision, and
effectiveness enhanced by use of minimum force but backed by the willingness to employ
massive force where warranted to mold the enemy’s perception.
In targeting, weapons and aim points were selected with an eye toward producing the
desired results with the least number of steps. An attack on one target, for example,
might be used to cripple others—such as striking a single pillar that holds up a whole
building or a communications relay on which all others depend.
Most of the operational concepts employed in Iraq seemed to work quite well, and they
did so in the absence of any new and untried “wonder weapon,” as in past wars.
The ground force in this war was not as large as the one used in 1991 to eject Iraqi forces
from Kuwait. However, attacks from the air were more numerous and more intense than
those mounted in Operation DESERT STORM. On March 19 (local Baghdad time), the
coalition conducted preparatory attacks against about 1,400 aim points, including strategic
targets in three major cities as well as attacks on air defenses, runways, suspected missile
launch sites, and command and control nodes. The main attack began March 20. Yet
all this was accomplished with far fewer aircraft than were deployed in Desert Storm.
Strikes in Five
Thanks to quick action on the part of the combined air operations center in Saudi Arabia,
coalition aircraft would, in some cases, strike emerging targets in as few as five minutes
after detection. After the fourth day of war, air attacks shifted dramatically from fixed
targets to mostly moving, fielded targets, said DOD officials.
The ground force marshaled to drive Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 totaled about 500,000
American troops. The force assembled by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Central Command
commander, to take Iraq from Saddam Hussein amounted to some 230,000 U.S. personnel
at the outset (rising to about 340,000 after three weeks). Only 125,000 of those were in
Iraq itself. This ground force was arrayed against an Iraqi force initially numbering about
400,000 and ranging in skill from well-trained Special Republican Guards to untrained
militia conscripted at gunpoint.
In 1991 Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf the coalition commander used six weeks of heavy
airpower attacks to blast away half of the enemy’s combat capability before ground
forces even engaged. Franks, by contrast, launched his ground assault before his full air
campaign. This was done in an attempt to achieve tactical surprise and thwart Saddam’s
forces before they could destroy oil wells and wreck port facilities.

Franks also decided to rush toward Baghdad, engaging Iraqi military when necessary but
largely bypassing major cities along the way. At the same time, he used airpower to destroy
the infrastructure of Saddam’s power in the capital. He aimed to quickly decapitate the
regime and thus leave Iraqi troops with the unpalatable choice of disorganized resistance
or outright surrender.
“The Iraqi military, as an organized defense in large combat formations, doesn’t really
exist anymore,” Central Command’s air chief, USAF Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley told
reporters on April 5. “We really do have air supremacy over this country.”
Scanning the “Kill Boxes”

The air element was directly responsible for a critical strategic goal—making sure the war
did not spill over onto other countries. From the outset, combat aircraft were patrolling
“kill boxes” in southern and western Iraq, searching for—and in some cases finding—
theater ballistic missiles that could be used against Iran, Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,
or Turkey. One F-15E crew reported definitively destroying a Scud missile launcher, a
weapon expressly forbidden to Iraq under UN resolutions.
The coalition weapon of choice for targets in Baghdad was the Joint Direct Attack Munition,
a munition guided by Global Positioning System satellite signals. The accuracy of the
weapon was described by a bomber wing commander as “to within one bomb’s length.” (A
2,000-pound JDAM is about 12 feet long.) Thousands rained down on Baghdad, producing
a spectacular show of force as regime headquarters and Saddam’s Presidential palaces
went up in clouds of smoke.
The might of modern airpower was used with devastating effect against Iraqi mechanized
forces massing just ahead of the Americans on the roads to Baghdad. Flushed from
their defensive positions around Baghdad to meet the approaching spearhead, Iraqi
armor was spotted by Joint STARS radar aircraft and quickly chewed up by Air Force
A-10s, F-15Es, F-16s, and other coalition fighters. The preferred weapon to destroy the
Republican Guard armored vehicles on the move was the A-10’s fearsome 30 mm Gatling
gun, which was incorporated for just such a purpose when the aircraft was designed 30
years ago. Other weapons used to pick off the Guard were the infrared-guided Maverick
missile, laser guided bombs, and the Sensor Fuzed Weapon.
Rather than engaging in massive tank battles, coalition ground forces encountered mostly
burning hulks on their drive north, courtesy of airpower.
Sowing Doubt, Suspicion

A major psychological campaign was also conducted, with 37 million leaflets showered
down on Iraqi troops beginning more than a month in advance; in an effort to convince
them they could not win and that they would be spared if they surrendered. The U.S.
also gambled that most of the Iraqi people had had enough of their leader and would
welcome coalition forces as liberators. In addition, the U.S. leadership hoped to sow
200
doubt and suspicion within the Iraqi regime, saying that it was in touch with generals who
planned to defect or surrender, always speaking of Saddam’s reign. Before Operation
IRAQI FREEDOM even began, Iraqi air defenses and command and control capabilities
in southern Iraq had been substantially degraded. An Air Force expeditionary unit
commander reported that B-1B bombers had been operating over Iraq for weeks prior
to “G-Day” and “A-Day,” the beginning of the ground and air elements of the campaign,
respectively in the past tense and of a successful coalition invasion as virtually a fait
accomplish.
In the fall of 2002, as tensions mounted, other American and British patrol airplanes,
covering the northern and southern no-fly zones, pursued “vigorous” retaliations, one
U.S. general reported, against Iraqi air defenses and communications nodes when the
Iraqis fired on coalition aircraft.
Having read the leaflets and seen that air defense sites that kept their radars on too long
were promptly destroyed, air defense operators would only emit briefly, then break down
and move to new locations, one official said.
“If they’re constantly moving, they aren’t a threat,” he said. “We are achieving the desired
effect of denying them a chance to operate. It really doesn’t matter right now if we destroy
them, as long as we can go wherever we want with any platform we want.”
He added that Iraqi forces had fired anti-aircraft missiles but nearly all “were unguided.”
The start of the action was characterized by extraordinary flexibility. When intelligence
pinpointing the location of Saddam and his senior leadership on March 20 came to
American forces, Franks ordered an attack on the location. Two USAF F-117 stealth
fighters, flying silhouetted against a full moon and with no jamming or fighter support
whatever, struck the target with four EGBU-27 laser guided bombs. The bombs hit just
four hours after the pilots had been roused from their cots and handed imagery of the
target on their way to their aircraft.
Following the four penetrating bombs were more than 40 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles,
fired from ships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, completing destruction of the target
both above and below ground. Even three weeks later, it was not clear whether Saddam
and his lieutenants had been killed in that first raid.
U.S. goals in Iraq were laid out by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a March
21 press conference in which he listed the tasks to be performed in order of importance.
“Our goal is to defend the American people,” Rumsfeld said, “and to eliminate Iraq’s
weapons of mass destruction and to liberate the Iraqi people.” It was later discovered
that Iraq did not in fact possess weapons of mass destruction.

Specific Objectives
Coalition military operations were focused on a number of specific objectives, Rumsfeld
said. These he listed as, first, “to end the regime of Saddam Hussein by striking with force
on a scope and scale that makes clear to Iraqis that he and his regime are finished.
“Next, to identify, isolate, and eventually eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,
their delivery systems, production capabilities, and distribution networks. Third, to search
for, capture, and drive out terrorists who have found safe harbor in Iraq. Fourth, to collect
such intelligence as we can find related to terrorist networks in Iraq and beyond. Fifth, to
collect such intelligence as we can find related to the global network of illicit weapons of
mass destruction activity. Sixth, to end sanctions and to immediately deliver humanitarian
relief, food, and medicine to the displaced and to the many needy Iraqi citizens. Seventh,
to secure Iraq’s oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people, and which they
will need to develop their country after decades of neglect by the Iraqi regime. And last,
to help the Iraqi people create the conditions for a rapid transition to a representative self-
government that is not a threat to its neighbors and is committed to ensuring the territorial
integrity of that country.”
Two weeks later, Rumsfeld said he demanded nothing less than “unconditional surrender”
of the Saddam regime.
To accomplish all this, the plan—called 1003V—had gone through many iterations and
refinements over the last year, according to Gen. Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
Rumsfeld said the off-the-shelf plan for an invasion of Iraq—originally dubbed 1003—“was
inappropriate” for the effects desired by the Bush Administration. That plan had called for
more troops than the Pentagon leadership wanted to use, department officials said. It also
left Saddam Hussein with too much opportunity to execute a “scorched earth” plan that
would destroy Iraq’s economic viability, specifically, its oil wells and pumping capability.
The U.S. wanted to use the revenue from that oil wealth to pay for the reconstruction of
Iraq and give a new government there a chance to get quickly on its feet.
Franks and his staff rebuilt 1003 several times, each time relying on fewer troops and
faster action.
When it was noted that the new plan seemed to have many of the features Rumsfeld
has been touting for two years—chiefly, fewer, more mobile ground troops—Rumsfeld
insisted, “It’s Tommy Franks’s plan.” He added that it had been “washed through” the
Joint Chiefs and regional commanders, all of whom had embraced it as “excellent.”
The plan emphasized preserving Iraq’s economic assets and civilian infrastructure and
preventing civilian casualties. It appeared, according to former Secretary of State James
A. Baker III, to be a blueprint to “win the peace” after winning the war.
202
The leaflets dropped on Iraq urged Iraqi troops not to fight for a doomed regime and
instructed them on how to safely surrender when coalition troops arrived. The leaflets
also warned that any Iraqi forces following orders to use chemical or biological weapons
would be found and prosecuted as war criminals. Other leaflets implored Iraqis not to
destroy their own oil wells, since this resource constituted their future livelihoods.
To guarantee the safety of the oil wells, Special Operations Forces moved in before
hostilities began and perched near the wells to disarm any bombs planted on them.
While many of the oil wells were indeed rigged with explosives, only seven of the several
hundred wells in Iraq were actually blown.
“Shock and Awe”

The Pentagon leadership expected that the ferocity of air attacks on Saddam’s facilities
in Baghdad and elsewhere, coupled with swift ground force movement in southern Iraq
and a perceived hatred of Saddam would cause Iraqi forces to surrender en masse and
welcome the coalition as liberators.
Military officials placed stories with the media warning that a thunderous opening attack
would “shock and awe” the enemy into believing that resistance was futile. The phrase
“shock and awe” came from a 1996 white paper by Harlan K. Ullman, advocating a fierce
and fast campaign of bombing and swift maneuver to “enervate” an enemy and bring
about quick capitulation. The strategy might help offset reduced numbers of ground
troops and other forces, Ullman wrote.
Ullman later said the bombing seen in Baghdad, while impressive, was not what he’d had
in mind. AF CSAF General Moseley said, “Shock and awe has never been a term that
I’ve used.”
“Did we withhold a large punch?”, asked Moseley. “We withheld some targets based on
the initiation conditions, and based on where the surface forces were, but that’s the right
thing to do anyway.”
Moseley said that, though relentless and devastating fire had been brought down on
fielded forces and regime targets, the key goal was “to absolutely, totally minimize the
collateral damage and absolutely, totally minimize the effect on the civilian population,
so that as much of this infrastructure can be returned back to the Iraqi people after the
liberation so that they can get themselves as fast as possible back to a functioning society.”
So strong was the emphasis on avoiding civilian damage whenever possible that Moseley
had some crews drop inert bombs—those using a guidance kit but with just a weight where
the explosive should be—to achieve, through mere kinetic effect, the specific destruction
wanted. He also ordered pilots to return with their bombs if they could not properly identify
their targets, and many did.
“We’ve trained to this and spent a lot of time worrying about this,” Moseley said. “We are
very, very sensitive to not creating a mess inside Baghdad.”

Turkish Surprise
Franks’s plan called for first sending in the 230,000 ground troops, followed by a flow
of reinforcements. Should the fighting not go as well or swiftly as intended, new forces
would continue to arrive in theater. “Should they not be needed, the flow could be turned
off,” Franks said.
Myers explained that the ground force was to move first, without the prelude of an air
campaign, to preserve the element of surprise.
“How do you protect tactical surprise when you have 250,000 troops surrounding Iraq on
D-Day?” Myers asked at an April 1 Pentagon press briefing. “Well, you do it by starting
the ground war first, air war second.”
Because of the unexpected March 20 opportunity to strike Saddam and his lieutenants,
G-Day was moved up one day, as was A-Day, the start of intensive air attacks on regime
targets in Baghdad, Mosul, and Tikrit. Ballistic missiles—with or without weapons of mass
destruction—were priority targets.
It was essential that Saddam not be allowed to launch missiles at Israel, which had
pledged to retaliate if attacked, as it had not done in 1991. For this, coalition aircraft were
deployed into kill boxes over southern and western Iraq, where mobile missiles had been
detected previously.
Franks also deployed Patriot missile batteries with the new PAC-3 missile, which
intercepted a few of the missiles that Iraqi forces managed to launch in the first few days
of the conflict. It is thought that the launched missiles were either al Samoud or Soviet–
made Frog weapons, smaller than the longer-ranged Scuds.
Franks’s plan called for a sweeping action in the north, with tanks and mechanized
infantry advancing from Turkey. When Turkey withheld permission to stage the forces
or permit strike sorties to originate on its soil, the plan shifted. USAF C-17s deployed
airborne forces that seized the northern airfield of Bashur, where airlifters began bringing
in vehicles and supplies to reinforce them. (This airlift included the first-ever battlefield
insertion of an M1A1 tank, by C-17.) Turkey did allow overflight by U.S. aircraft, especially
badly needed aerial tankers.
U.S. troops, in particular Special Operations Forces (SOF), joined Kurdish rebels to
apply pressure on Mosul in northern Iraq. As in Afghanistan, they worked closely with
aircraft overhead, which delivered precision strikes on enemy forces. The effect was that
small SOF groups, enhanced by indigenous forces and backed up by airpower, virtually
substituted for a brigade of first-line troops.
In the north, American SOF elements and airpower forces attacked terrorist camps, one of
which was found to harbor what appeared to be a primitive chemical/biological weapons
factory.
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In the west, near the Jordanian border, Special Forces took Iraq’s H-2 and H-3 airfields,
using them to mount more Scud–hunting raids and to serve as resupply points. Tactical
C-130 transports operated from these airfields shortly after the war began, resupplying
coalition troops throughout Iraq.
In the south, the advance set a blistering pace, so fast that Army and Marine units seemed
to have outrun their supply lines. At several points, tip-of-the-spear units reported running
low on ammunition. They were resupplied by nonstop convoys as well as combat airdrops
from C-17s and C-130s.
After a week’s fighting, the coalition ground advance slowed, causing many to speculate
that it had been stopped by Iraqi resistance, had outrun its supply lines, or was too thinly
spread out to be able to protect its flanks. In reality, it was preparing for the next push
and allowing airpower to attack the Republican Guard elements that had moved out of
Baghdad and its environs to meet the coalition ground force. Airpower quickly targeted
and destroyed most of the Republican Guard.
Saddam’s forces did not fight a brilliant defense. They failed to use the terrain to their
advantage, leaving major bridges—instead of blowing them up—over the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers for the coalition to use. Saddam also used his least-dependable forces
as his first line of defense and then put his best Republican Guard forces out in the open
with no air cover.
By April 7, ground units had taken Saddam International Airport, closed off all major
highway entrances and exits to the city of Baghdad, made several excursions in force
through the city, and captured two of the Presidential palaces. A supplies-laden C-130
Hercules landed and took off from the airport, now renamed Baghdad International Airport.
The Republican Guard had ceased to exist as a large, coherent fighting force and was
reduced to resistance in small groups, which the Pentagon characterized as “militarily
insignificant.” And the U.S. was preparing to install the first elements of a transitional
government.
Iraq’s air defense system had proved ineffective. Its constituent parts were either knocked
out prior to full hostilities or were moving too frequently to mount any meaningful threat.
Only one coalition aircraft was shot down by enemy fire, while accidents, including friendly
fire, brought down several others during the first three weeks. Many Iraqi aircraft were
destroyed on the ground, and none were launched against coalition forces.
Air Force and other coalition aircraft were based at 37 locations, including the Gulf Region,
Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Eastern Europe (particularly Bulgaria and Romania),
the UK, and Whiteman AFB, MO.
By the end of the first 21 days, fewer than 100 Americans had been killed by enemy fire.

Bombs for a Tyrant
During daylight hours on April 7, CENTCOM received information from human intelligence
that put Saddam and his closest aides in a particular compound in the northwest portion
of Baghdad. Officials fed the target data to a B-1B bomber, orbiting nearby. The bomber
crew loaded the coordinates into four GBU-31 bunker-buster bombs equipped with GPS
guidance. Within 12 minutes of the order, the bombs struck the structure, leaving a crater
60 feet deep.
CENTCOM later said it did not know if Saddam had been killed in the strike but that, if he
had been present, he would have sustained more than just simple injuries. The next day,
U.S. forces reported that resistance seemed to lack any central control at all.
Real-time imagery from Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling
over Baghdad aided close air support provided by AC-130 gunships and a range of
aircraft, from fighters to bombers, using JDAMs.
“If you can give me a specific location in there, we have the means to hit it with precision,”
a Pentagon official said. “And I mean, we’ll ask, ‘Which window?’ ”
Coalition leaders pointed to astonishing gains over the previous three weeks, highlighted
by the jubilation in Baghdad as residents toppled statues of Saddam Hussein.
Though the war was over, the fighting was not. Officials declined to be specific about what
conditions would lead them to declare victory.
For the most part, they said, the coalition’s military action would end when resistance
stopped and a new Iraqi government, composed of Iraqis, had been set up.
A Pentagon official said he himself was awed by the swift results of the campaign.
“Fifteen years ago, we were starting to talk about this Revolution in Military Affairs,” he
said. “We used to be bothered by the nighttime. Now we love the night—we can operate
in it, and we get some protection from it. We used to be bothered by the weather. While
we would like to have clear weather, if it’s cloudy or foggy or there are obscurants like
smoke or haze, that’s OK, now. We can still strike with precision. We have 24/7, real-time
imagery of the target. This is just unbelievable, but the proof of it is out there.”
He added, “I never thought we would be here so soon.”
206
A CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS
(All dates are Baghdad time.)
March 19. Coalition aircraft conduct strikes to prepare the battlefield; Special Operations
Forces move into southern Iraq to secure border gun positions and protect oil wells.
March 20. Two USAF F-117 stealth fighters and six U.S. warships attack leadership
targets of opportunity about 5:35 a.m. in Baghdad. About 45 minutes later (10:16 p.m.
EST, March 19) in Washington, D.C., President Bush announces to the American people
that operations in Iraq have commenced. The Senate passes a resolution backing the
operation, 99–0. Coalition ground forces move from Kuwait into Iraq at 8 p.m., marking
the start of G–Day, the ground campaign.
March 21. At 9 p.m., coalition air forces commence nearly 1,000 strike sorties, marking
the beginning of A–Day, the air campaign. The House passes a resolution backing military
operations, 392–11. Coalition forces seize an airfield in western Iraq, advancing 100 miles
into Iraq.
March 25. British forces secure the port city of Umm Qasr, opening a key route for
humanitarian supplies.
March 26. USAF C-17s air-drop some 1,000 Army paratroopers and USAF personnel
into northern Iraq to open a northern front and secure the airfield at Bashur.
April 3. U.S. ground forces take Saddam International Airport, just 10 miles from
Baghdad. Coalition air strikes continue to pound the Republican Guard and provide close
air support for ground troops.
April 7. British forces secure Basra. U.S. forces push into Baghdad.
April 9. Baghdad falls.
April 16. CENTCOM officials declare end of major combat action.
Even though major ground and air combat operations only lasted a month, the U.S.
military would remain in Iraq for the better part of the next decade.

Focus On:
AIRPOWER IN AFGHANISTAN
How a Faraway War is Remaking the Air Force
By Dr. Rebecca Grant. Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Turning Point
On Dec. 28, 2008, a group of schoolchildren were walking past a military checkpoint in
the eastern Afghanistan province of Khost, hard by the unsettled border with Pakistan.
Suddenly, a suicide bomber drove his sport utility vehicle toward them and detonated a
huge cargo of explosives. The enormous resulting blast killed 14 children and two adults
and wounded 58 others.
It was a devastating outrage, but, in Afghanistan, not an exceptional one. This incident
closed out a bloody year in which well more than 6,000 persons in Afghanistan perished
in war- and insurgency-related violence. “The brutality and disregard for human life by
terrorists is sickening,” remarked the commander of NATO forces in that nation, U.S.
Army Gen. David D. McKiernan.1
All signs suggest that this is only going to get worse, and perhaps much worse. The war
for Afghanistan is at a major turning point, as is the development of airpower as a key
weapon in the prosecution of that war.
Long gone is the relative calm seen in the years immediately after the first phase of
Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001 and early 2002. The enemy’s use of roadside
“improvised explosive devices”—IEDs—has expanded, rising to 3,276 in Afghanistan
for the year 2008, a 45 percent increase over 2007.2 Suicide bombings have become
commonplace. The Taliban, which early in this decade lost control but never went away,
has stepped up the violence. It has fallen back on a long-standing network of support
that permeates the Pashtun population of south and east Afghanistan. The Taliban also
taps the illegal poppy-growing trade for financing. It subcontracts suicide bombings and
other such work to al Qaeda. The net result is the full-scale resumption of struggle for the
control of Afghanistan.
The war in Afghanistan no longer is the kind of war that the U.S. waged in 2001. In the last
three years, it has become the main front for an evolving style of airpower employment.
This change has not happened by accident; there has been a fundamental shift in the
context of the war. “The enemy decided to show up,” explained Air Force Lt. Gen. Gary L.
North, who since late 2005 has served as the combined force air component commander
(CFACC) of U.S. Central Command.3 In this capacity, North has been overseeing the
air war in Afghanistan along with all air operations for Iraq and other areas of Central
Command’s theater.
208
In Afghanistan, the enemy is a mix of insurgent Taliban, al Qaeda, and other Islamic
elements, as well as big-time drug lords and other criminals. Opposing them are the
forces of a U.S.-led coalition of nations, a separate but related force of NATO allies, and
a growing Afghan National Army.
From the beginning, the coalition’s military units have done their full share of the serious
fighting in Afghanistan. They operate under the name of Operation Enduring Freedom
(OEF). They tend to be found mostly in the disturbed south and east of the country,
regions in which the Taliban is strongest and most deeply entrenched.
The NATO military units, operating as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF),
have taken over security in many sections of the country after beginning their mission at
UN direction. The UN guidance, set out in September 2007 in the form of Resolution
1776, calls for the force to disarm militias, reform the justice system, train a national police
force and army, provide security for elections, and give assistance to others seeking to
rein in the burgeoning narcotics industry.
The OEF/ISAF fight is being carried out by a powerful, mostly Western conventional
military force. Afghanistan at the end of 2008 was a theater for some 55,000 foreign troops,
with more on the way for 2009.4 Sandbagged firebases support ISAF activity. Everything
from 155 mm howitzers to MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles) are on
the ground. Each week, overland logistics systems deliver tons of supplies and millions
of gallons of fuel to main operating bases.
However, a substantial recent increase in OEF and ISAF forces, firepower, and
operations, by itself, has not been sufficient to solve the insurgent problem. “Victory ... is
not a foregone conclusion,” warned one airman who recently observed operations there.5
In this emerging atmosphere of growing struggles with tenacious and ruthless enemies,
Western airpower in general and USAF force in particular have come to prominence.
Airpower has carried a huge share of the fighting in Afghanistan and as a result, it has
had to evolve to meet the needs of the battle.
What stands out first is the upswing in air strike activity. In the entire year of 2005, when
the war was in a kind of lull, the coalition carried out only 176 strikes in which aircraft
actually employed munitions. Over the 12 months of 2008 that just ended, the number
soared to 3,369. “Most people focus on the number of bombs dropped as a quantification
of our missions,” North pointed out. “It’s a lot more than that.”
Indeed it is. “Airpower plays a vital role in dismounted or mounted maneuvers through
hostile areas,” said Army SSgt. Chris Summers, a targeting NCO with the 2-506th
Battalion operating in Afghanistan.6 “When CAS is on station, it greatly reduces the threat.
If we do get hit, only a handful [of enemy troops] will be brave enough to fire, knowing
[aircraft are overhead].” In addition, tactical resupply of forces now is done largely with
precision airdrop.

From airlift to fire support to intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance (ISR) activities,
the full abilities of modern airpower have been brought to bear. They are needed to allow
anti-Taliban forces to cope with the constant adaptation demanded by the many tasks of
the Afghan war.
Afghanistan has changed airpower, too, functioning like a huge and permanent battle lab
for fine-tuning the interaction of air and land forces in many situations. Runways have
been extended to host more strike aircraft, airlifters, and helicopters. Airpower based in-
country has increased and will expand again and again in years to come.
The employment of airpower in Afghanistan already has gone through many phases over
the past seven and a half years of fighting. Hard lessons in air and ground cooperation
have been followed up with impressive strides in new tactics and equipment.
Airpower tasks have multiplied. In fact, the air war in Afghanistan has become the scene
of innovation—sometimes jaw-dropping innovation—for nearly every weapon system.
Before the war in Afghanistan, few if any would have pictured operations during which:
• The fighter force’s use of strafing and rocket attacks would be viewed as the
techniques of choice to break ground engagements.
• Unmanned aerial vehicles such as today’s Predator and Reaper aircraft would
carry out a hybrid ISR-and-close-air-support role, stalking and attacking individuals
emplacing IEDs on a road or otherwise engaging in hostile acts.
• Heavy B-1B bombers would routinely carry out passes at near-treetop level with
afterburners, separating troops in contact from the enemy without dropping a
single explosive weapon.
• A Navy aircraft carrier, positioned in the northern Arabian Sea, would send one
strike fighter squadron to Iraq while using the others to carry out patrols and fulfill
joint tactical air strike requests in Afghanistan.
• Two C-17 airlifters, acting autonomously, could together drop a massive
80,000-pound load of supplies directly and precisely to forward troops in remote
areas using only the GPS satellite-guided Joint Precision Airdrop System.
Yet all of this, and much, much more, has in fact taken place.
Today, airpower is providing a level of lethal fire support to dispersed ground forces on a
scale that far exceeds anything ever before seen in the annals of air and land component
cooperation. The same is true of airlift support. Yet what makes the Afghan air war so
singular in nature is not only the volume of air strikes or airdrops. It is also the precision,
persistence, and sophistication of the effort that stands out.
210
For example, nearly all routine resupply of land forces in tactical fighting positions today is
carried out via the use of precision airdrop, which in 2008 totaled more than 16.5 million
pounds, most in Afghanistan.7 For emergencies, airdrop aircraft sitting alert simply
load whatever the land force needs and take off in under an hour. By the same token,
overwatch, fire support, and close tracking of hostile forces have become something
close to routine in this air war. All aircraft, manned or unmanned, now carry targeting
pods. Close to 100 percent of all weapons carried and employed by aircraft in Afghanistan
are of the precision type. Fully 100 percent of close support and ISR aircraft are sure to
take off equipped with a video downlink. The Afghan air war has become a truly digital air
war, achieving unprecedented levels of precision and finely tuned control.
Today, Afghanistan is the main airpower front in the global war on terrorism. Afghanistan
exceeds Iraq as the scene of actual weapon releases. The air war in Afghanistan has, in
short, evolved into a prime arena for air and ground operations in a low-intensity airspace
environment.
Actually, the upswing in air operations, though apparent to all by 2007, began in mid-
2006. ISAF forces extended their mission to providing additional security in hot spots and
attempting to stem the revitalization of Taliban support. “In Afghanistan, on occasions in
2006 and 2007, the frequency of requests from British ground forces for close air support
came close to that in Normandy in 1944,” concluded a Royal Air Force study of the war.8
There is no denying that the security situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate and
to confront the United States and its allies with severe challenges. Victory will require a
huge new effort, with no assurance of success even then. The Congressional Research
Service, in a recent report on the war by analyst Kenneth Katzman, summed up the
situation this way: “There is no agreement on the causes of the deterioration—reasons
advanced include Afghan government corruption; the absence of governance in many
rural areas; safe haven enjoyed by militants in Pakistan; the reticence of some NATO
contributors to actively combat insurgents; and the slow pace of economic development.”9
Hence the year 2009 brings a turning point not only in the conflict itself, but most likely in
the American approach to it. President Barack Obama, during the Presidential campaign,
singled out Afghanistan for early and renewed attention within his new Administration.
“We must refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and Pakistan—the central front in our war
against al Qaeda—so that we are confronting terrorists where their roots run deepest,”
he wrote.10 “Success in Afghanistan is still possible, but only if we act quickly, judiciously,
and decisively.”
The President certainly realizes that much is at stake. NATO must nail down a victory in
the war against terrorism in Afghanistan, and airpower has to help. This report is a double
investigation of how the battle space in Afghanistan has evolved and how airmen have led
the way in adapting to and mastering that battle space.

Shadow War
Back when it all started, though, it was far from obvious that the fighting in Afghanistan
would flare up again, or that forces of airpower would have to surge along with it.
The United States and its coalition partners began Operation Enduring Freedom with a
series of air strikes on Oct. 7, 2001. It was the first blow in the global war against terrorism
following the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and it soon produced a
stunning success. The Air Force’s B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers demonstrated the unique
merits of long-range precision strike. Together, aircrews and ground units learned the art
of rapid retargeting in response to air controllers working with special operations forces
engaged with the enemy. Navy carrier battle groups clustered in the northern Arabian
Sea to provide air superiority over the battle space. The Air Force’s new C-17 airlifters
began almost immediate delivery of military cargos and humanitarian aid to the Afghan
people in remote areas. Over it all was a massive USAF-led ISR effort. All of it aided by a
continuous stream of USAF KC-135 and KC-10 aerial refueling support.
Initial planning for air operations was managed by then-Lt. Gen. Charles F. Wald, 9th
Air Force commander and CFACC. In November 2001, then-Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley
took over as 9th Air Force boss and CFACC.
With just a few hundred U.S. and coalition forces on the ground, airpower became the
deciding force pushing allied Afghan forces to victory against the Taliban. Major cities,
long held by Taliban forces, in short order began to fall like dominoes. “Those population
centers toppled as the result of a combined arms team: U.S. airpower and a combination
of special forces and Afghan troops,” observed Gen. John M. Keane, then the Army vice
chief of staff.11 By December 2001, Taliban control of Afghanistan effectively was at an
end.
By early 2002, the American war in Afghanistan looked all but over. Military operations
settled into a pattern of intelligence collection and searches for al Qaeda and Taliban
remnants and, of course, keeping up the dragnet for Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda’s leader.
U.S. complacency would occasionally receive a jolt, such as the reverses suffered in
Operation Anaconda in March 2002. For the most part, however, Afghanistan appeared to
be on the right track. In July 2002, the Afghan Loya Jirga, or national assembly, appointed
Hamid Karzai to be Afghanistan’s interim head of government. Free elections in October
2004 confirmed Karzai as the nation’s first President.
In reality, the Afghanistan war was merely entering a period of hibernation lasting through
2005 and into 2006. During the first months of this lull, two very different problems were
starting to take root, with consequences seen today. Problem one was the reconstitution
of surviving Taliban elements into a political and military force. Problem two was the
bifurcation of the Afghan military mission into parts controlled by the U.S. (which was
OEF) and by NATO (which was ISAF). NATO’s entry into the war in December 2001
created a dual mission. Over time, the NATO stabilization missions would grow far more
complicated than member nations foresaw, and the Taliban would return to frustrate
international efforts to put a permanent end to Afghanistan’s years of conflict.
212
After the first phase of OEF, the Taliban was down, but most assuredly not out. The
quick U.S.-led victory actually left many Taliban at large and spread through the 25-million
strong Pashtun community in the Texas-sized nation. Oddly enough, the quick military
rout that swept the Taliban from power in fall 2001 may have laid the groundwork for the
Taliban’s eventual return. OEF was designed to chase out the Taliban, and that’s what
it did—without killing or capturing a sizeable number. Successful coalition operations in
the north and around Kabul drove waves of Taliban and al Qaeda out of towns and cities.
Many went south toward Kandahar and Helmand, and east toward Pakistan. Other melted
into the mountains. They fled in small groups leaving not much trace of their numbers.
Others moved out of Kandahar itself as the pressure increased.
Central Command saw the movement but counted it all toward the good. “We see evidence
that a great many people of the non-Afghan type are working very hard to get out of
Kandahar,” opined Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of Central Command
at the start of OEF.12 While there was unease about the escape into the hinterland of so
many enemy fighters, few American leaders seemed overly concerned about the long-
term impact on stability in Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld noted,
“There are people, undoubtedly, who have hidden in back rooms and in homes.”13 The
implication was that, some day, these “defectors” could just as easily switch sides again.
Still, this was not seen as a huge or unmanageable threat.
Politics amongst Afghans complicated the situation, too. The leaders of the Northern
Alliance, a loose ethnic-Tajik-dominated confederation of warlords and militias formed
in 1996 to oppose Taliban dominance, were often quite willing to let the Taliban fighters
surrender en masse and walk away. The aftermath of an intense battle at Kunduz
provided an example of this laissez-faire attitude. Franks estimated there might be 2,000
to 3,000 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in the fray, and described Kunduz as “heavily
infested...with some of the more hard-core people.”14 However, the Taliban contingent
at Kunduz petitioned the Northern Alliance to arrange a surrender and safe passage for
foreign fighters. On Nov. 20, 2001, the Northern Alliance halted operations at Kunduz
to allow three days of negotiations. In the end, only about 1,000 Taliban surrendered
to the Northern Alliance, and many of those quickly went free. Meanwhile, across the
border in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf made it known that he was looking out
for Pakistanis who had been fighting with the Taliban. He wanted those who had been
defeated and captured to be released and returned to their native country.
DOD leaders were well aware of the problems of completing the destruction of the Taliban
or even of gauging the size of the surviving remnant. As Franks said: “The Taliban is
not destroyed as an effective fighting force from the level of one individual man carrying
a weapon. …We’ll continue to do our best to eliminate that force of the Taliban. The
secretary has previously referred to this as ‘draining the swamp.’“ The Taliban fighters had
options, and these made matters difficult for American military leaders. Rumsfeld said:
“They can go across a border and wait and come back. They can drop their weapons and
blend into the communities. They can go up in the mountains in the caves and tunnels.
They can defect—join the other side—or change their mind, go back.”15 Rumsfeld later
reinforced the difficulty, saying: “There are people in those cities who are hiding and who

are perfectly willing to tie grenades around their bodies, blow up themselves and whoever
else happens to be standing around. There are people who have defected who may
redefect. There are people who have gone across borders who may come back across
borders.”16
American officials knew that Taliban elements were fleeing south to sparsely populated
areas that were controlled by ethnically compatible Pashtun tribes. However, setting up
a vast dragnet to catch fleeing fighters had never been part of the plan. “Where we
can positively identify Taliban as such, we are pursuing them,” said Rear Adm. John D.
Stufflebeem, a spokesman for the Joint Staff in Washington.17 However, Stufflebeem
admitted that it was “difficult in the southern part of Afghanistan, west of Kandahar, to be
able to positively identify what may be southern Pashtun tribes versus Taliban troops that
may be on the move.”
At the time, practically the only U.S. forces on the ground were special operations forces
(SOF). They observed the southward flow with little chance of stopping it. Marines arrived
at Kandahar in late November 2001 and a formal Army component entered the country
about the same time. None of these groups believed Afghanistan was entirely secure.
Yet the coalition’s forces did not have an explicit mission to comb Afghanistan from one
end to the other. The goal was to topple the Taliban and install a new, transition authority
hostile to terrorist safe havens. “Our efforts, of course, will be shifting from cities at some
point to hunting down and rooting out terrorists where they hide,” Rumsfeld said in late
November 2001.18 Beyond this, the coalition was also embarking on surveys of more
than 40 sites and caves to check for suspected weapons of mass destruction.
Taliban fighters were considered to be refugees, not rulers. “Afghanistan was a reasonably
safe haven for terrorists,” Rumsfeld said on Dec. 27, 2001, but now “the Taliban have
been driven from power. Their leaders are on the run.”19 Of course, the country was not
entirely free of even the purely military dangers posed by the Taliban or al Qaeda. Only a
small fraction of the top leadership was known to be dead or in U.S. custody. Still, most
U.S. and coalition officers felt that the major operations in Afghanistan were over, with
only mopping up operations left to do.
The glow quickly faded a bit, though. What had been a latent threat became real and only
too apparent in Operation Anaconda in March 2002. In this operation, a combined force of
U.S. and Afghan ground troops attempted to clear the Shah-i-Kot Valley of the enemy, but
were surprised by a bigger-than-expected concentration of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters
who put up ferocious resistance. Both sides took casualties with no clear-cut victory for
the U.S.
The ground component failed to include air support planning. As then-CENTCOM air
boss Moseley explained in a 2003 interview, “The bigger issue is there was never an
opportunity to orchestrate and figure out what was needed.” He added, “Had we known
this was going to go on, we would have stood up a full ASOC [air support operations
center] ... and I would have forward deployed the A-10s for indigenous quick reactions.”20
214
Still, whenever coalition forces came into contact with adversaries, the tactical victory
almost always went to coalition units. After Operation Anaconda, Afghanistan was relatively
quiet for the rest of 2002. Rumsfeld was well enough pleased with the work of the first
year of OEF that he could say, in August 2002, “I suspect it would be accurate to say that
the security situation in Afghanistan is the best it’s been probably in close to a quarter of
a century”—that is, before the Soviet invasion of the nation in December 1979.21 Franks
agreed, saying: “Does that mean everything is just right in Afghanistan? No. To be sure, it
is not. But what it does mean is that there is a government in Afghanistan that is trying to
move forward to the future, and I think our coalition is pleased to be part of that move.”22
It wasn’t that the U.S. ignored the peril. In June 2002, Rumsfeld noted about the Afghan-
Pakistan border, “It has been our worry for the last six months that the border’s porous,
that people move back and forth going both ways, and that there are pockets of al Qaeda
and Taliban that are still floating around on both sides.”23 However, a month earlier,
Rumsfeld had declared, “Notwithstanding the periodic flare-ups, the security situation in
the country is generally good and seems to be improving modestly.”24 That consensus
appeared to hold steady.
It was during this period of relative calm and optimism that America’s allies in NATO
came on board. Some individual European allies already had deployed into Afghanistan
some SOF units and aircraft. However, the alliance did not officially take up its mission
in Afghanistan until the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1386, creating the
International Security Assistance Force. This happened on Dec. 20, 2001. The goal was
to help stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan after decades of war and internal strife.
ISAF’s mission, and NATO’s involvement in it, was at first confined to Kabul, the capital.
This was the case throughout 2002 and 2003. NATO operations in Afghanistan placed
heavy emphasis on reconstruction and security, while the separate OEF tasking kept
up the low-level hunt for terrorists and prosecution of the occasional dustup with the
Taliban. “There was an expectation, I think, that as insurgents struggled to recover
between 2002 and 2005 that we were on a path more towards state building,” Michael
G. Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations & low-intensity conflict,
told reporters in 2008, but he added that it had not “materialized in a way that some of our
NATO partners expected it would.”25
By August 2003, NATO had taken command of the ISAF itself. The U.S.-led OEF continued
as a distinct operation separate from ISAF, keeping up the hunt for high-value targets,
among other things. Gradually, NATO involvement in Afghanistan grew. The alliance took
over responsibility for security in sectors, starting with the Kabul area in spring 2004. The
next areas to transfer to NATO control were parts of northern Afghanistan in fall 2004
and western Afghanistan in spring 2005. None of the member nations was prepared for a
large conventional fight, and none expected it to come about.
The outbreak of the U.S. war in Iraq in March 2003 tended to further obscure the
goings-on in Afghanistan. For most Americans, after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the war in
Afghanistan receded further into the shadows, becoming a kind of side-show. U.S. forces
in Afghanistan who died (including those who were killed in action, died of their wounds,

or were categorized as accidents or other deaths) that year numbered 45, down from the
49 fatalities recorded in 2002.26 Even in 2004 the fatalities total was just 52. Mentions of
the war in Afghanistan tended toward the cursory. Numerous other issues—from North
Korea’s nuclear weapons drive to the outbreak of avian flu and arrival of Hurricane Katrina
dominated American news headlines in most of 2004 and 2005. Above all, of course, the
nation’s attention was focused on Iraq.
The political lull in Afghanistan was matched by a relatively quiet period in development
and combat employment of airpower. Routine rotations of airpower forces to Afghanistan
continued. At first, it was rare for aircraft to expend munitions. Noted one officer: “Aircrews
trained in CAS with an emphasis on placing bombs on mechanized fielded forces have
been frustrated in [low intensity conflicts] by the lack of ‘valid’ targets and a perception
that they are simply ‘drilling holes’ in the sky on the majority of missions.”27
For all that, though, the ground forces in Afghanistan were becoming accustomed to
relying on close air support as the prime source of backup fire. Overwatch and on-call
aircraft sorties allowed the relatively light coalition land forces to move with confidence
in high-threat areas. Maj. Gen. Eric T. Olson, commander of Task Force 76 and the U.S.
Army’s 25th Infantry Division (Light), commented at Bagram Air Base in August 2004,
“CAS is my reserve force.”28
Under the surface, however, matters clearly were beginning to heat up. There was
unmistakable evidence of residual Taliban and al Qaeda strength. One general officer
at Central Command described the military situation in Afghanistan in mid-2004 as a
demanding series of “constant operations to go ahead and keep anyone who would think
there is a safe haven in Afghanistan, to keep them off balance and again bring them to
justice through combat ops.”29
Strong links between some Pashtuns and the Taliban were in the process of revival. The
insurgents had dusted themselves off and began to look about for opportunities. Not only
were many ex-Taliban still in Afghanistan; the fundamental sympathies with them were
still in place. Having something to fall back on gave the Taliban the ability to recreate
an insurgency. Two scholars writing in the Harvard quarterly, International Security,
put matters in these words: “Because of the length of the Taliban regime’s tenure in
Afghanistan and its (nonregime) insurgent durability since the start of Operation Enduring
Freedom, the Taliban has been more successful than most previous jihadi movements in
the region in consolidating and embedding these social changes. Therein lies the danger,
because with the exception of the Hindustan Fanatics group of the mid-19th century,
most such mad mullah movements of the past have been of such relatively short duration
or limited territorial scope that they made little lasting impact on tribal structures and
mechanisms.”30
At any rate, the Taliban had enough support to reconfigure its political work and begin
anew in the military field. By some time in 2005, the Afghan war had entered a new phase.
An upward trend in violence would claim 66 American lives (another 32 were listed as
accidents/other deaths) by the end of the year.31 Glowing briefings about the successes
of reconstruction and the inexorable march of democracy gave way to more-candid and
216
sobering assessments of the prospects for violence in different regions. Rumsfeld and
President Karzai continued to praise Afghanistan’s “excellent start,” but they also warned
of the evils of narcotics trafficking.32
NATO continued to add troops and responsibilities. However, the game on the ground
was changing fast. The security landscape of Afghanistan was acquiring all the symptoms
of an insurgency. Note that, in this period, coalition forces were driven to undertake
Operation Red Wing, which targeted an active IED-making cell in Kunar province.
Kunar was the very same area in which, at the start of the war, Taliban forces negotiated
a big surrender of forces and therefore seemed to be more or less permanently pacified.
Deadly encounters with IEDs became more commonplace—although senior commanders
insisted that the Afghan people were good about identifying, locating, and neutralizing
these threats.
By summer 2005, security conditions had deteriorated to a noticeable degree. Conditions
led to a delay in scheduled Afghan elections until the fall. “Let me assure you that the U.S.
and coalition forces are going to maintain the initiative and conduct combined offensive
operations up to and through the elections,” pledged Army Brig. Gen. James G. Champion,
who was with Task Force 76, in August 2005.33 Still, the reassertion of power by the
Taliban and other warlords had set up the conditions for the expansion of an insurgency.
U.S. and NATO forces found themselves extending their operations in an effort to beef up
security in regions where the Karzai government was having little success.
Summarizing the changes in Afghanistan by summer 2005, Champion said that, in the
northeast, Kunar and Nangarhar provinces were a new source of concern. Despite
reconstruction activities ranging from road building to digging wells, the Taliban influence
was back. “The enemy is ... heavily involved in criminal activities such as timber, gem,
and opium smuggling, in addition to the ongoing struggle against the government of
Afghanistan.” The eastern border provinces also saw increased activity. “The enemy
remains focused on conducting harassing attacks against Afghan and coalition forces along
the border in Paktia, Khost, and Paktika provinces,” said Champion. “We continuously
conduct patrols and operations in this area on the Afghanistan side of the border.”
Even worse was the situation in the southern provinces. The increased responses of
coalition forces had brought about deaths of more than 400 enemy combatants there.
Problems varied, but all of them indicated an attempt by the Taliban to gain a new grip
upon the provinces, especially in the east and south. Nimroz and Helmand provinces
were again havens for Taliban drug smuggling activity. At the time, Champion said of the
Taliban, “They are becoming more ruthless.”
By the end of the winter season in early 2006, a major new struggle with the Taliban
was brewing. U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, commander of Combined Forces
Command-Afghanistan, noted: “In southern Afghanistan you’ve got areas in which the
government of Afghanistan has not up to this point advanced and established a firm
presence. It’s within that area of a vacuum that Taliban in certain cases has established a
greater area of influence.”34

In the face of this, NATO was preparing to take over responsibility for Regional Command
South. It was there—in Helmand, Kandahar, and Oruzgan provinces—where the Karzai
government’s influence was low, and the Taliban’s influence and strength was on the rise.
British Gen. David Richards, who took over command of NATO/ISAF in May 2006, was
blunt in his assessment of America’s handling of the war:
“At the end of 2001, the Taliban were defeated, weren’t they? You know, wonderful work
by a lot of people, mainly American and Afghan, and it looked all pretty hunky-dory. …
[With] the benefit of hindsight, you know, we thought it was all done, success was there,
and we could adopt a sort of peacetime approach to it and didn’t treat it as aggressively
as a problem that with the bit of hindsight we should have done. Your forces were doing
great work, but they were almost in isolation because army and police, the Afghan army
and police, weren’t there to help at that stage. … The Taliban got more confident and
realized that it wasn’t yet over and they had this opportunity. ... The Taliban exploited it.”35
The war was back on. It would deepen and in two years lead to a tripling of the NATO
troop presence in Afghanistan.
Upswing
It was in this new battle for Afghanistan— fought out in 2006, 2007, and 2008, and
continuing without letup in 2009—that airpower would be tested and prove just how
far it had come since the earliest months of Operation Enduring Freedom. While the
specialized hunt for bin Laden and others persisted, the challenges for airmen widened.
Their main task would be to provide tactical support to dispersed ground forces. That
support included everything from provision of ISR data and images to close air support for
troops in contact and employment of precision tactical airdrops. There has been a major
upswing in the action. It was a product of Taliban activity—and of more aggressive OEF
and NATO operations, too.
On the Taliban side, the main indicators were grisly and ideological in nature. For example,
the Taliban’s maximum leader, Mullah Omar, was calling for a “summer of blood” in 2006
and boasting that Taliban forces would retake Kandahar, just to spite Hamid Karzai.36
Ultimately the Taliban fomented what two scholars later called an “algebraic increase in
violence.”37 This, they reported, included 139 suicide bomb attacks—a fourfold increase
over 2005—and approximately 1,600 bombings with IEDs—triple the number for the
prior year.
On the NATO side, the indicators were many and varied, but none stood out more that
the ratcheting up of airpower operations. For all of 2005, the coalition’s combat aircraft
expended against all Afghan targets just 176 weapons.38 In 2006, by contrast, the number
soared to 1,770 weapons. This tenfold increase was the most open and obvious measure
of the accelerating pace of activity by U.S., NATO, and Afghan land forces. In that year,
the number of weapons employed in air strikes in Afghanistan surpassed the count for
that in Iraq.
218
The tempo change first became apparent in February 2006. At the combined air
operations center (CAOC) in Southwest Asia, the staff of the combined forces air
component commander, USAF’s North, still scheduled more routine CAS sorties for Iraq
than for Afghanistan. However, in February 2006, the monthly totals of bomb releases in
Afghanistan passed those in Iraq for the first time. Said Eikenberry in early May, “It’s fair
to say the Taliban influence in certain areas is stronger than it was last year.”39
As spring arrived, the count continued to rise, as airpower forces moved to back up
ground attacks against the foe. One such action was Operation Mountain Lion, a joint
U.S.-Afghan raid launched in April 2006 against a concentration of insurgents in a rural
area. “This operation is helping the government of Afghanistan set the security conditions
so democratic processes can take root,” explained Air Force Maj. Gen. Allen G. Peck,
deputy air component commander for Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan.40 CAS
sorties featuring actual drops of munitions rose to 63 in Afghanistan that month, contrasted
with just six for all of OIF.
For airmen, the rise in air strikes also marked a direct outgrowth of two factors. One was
improved intelligence. “Between 2005 and 2006, our intelligence got a lot better,” observed
North.41 With more ISR available, the range of activity for air strikes expanded as key
targets fell under the coalition’s net. The second factor was the expanding demands of the
ground forces themselves. The Afghan National Army was “at a growth point,” North said.
As its forays into the remote provinces increased, taking Afghan forces into areas where
Taliban concentrations were growing, ANA soldiers saw more contact. “The enemy was
more aggressive in meeting the ANA,” North said of this period.
NATO also was ramping up its ground operations. The head of U.S. Central Command,
Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, later referred to the “thickening of the NATO force in areas
where we hadn’t gone before” and how that activity “certainly turned over a lot of different
things.”42 He itemized them: “No. 1, Taliban. No. 2, a certain amount of well organized
criminal and drug groups that cooperate with the Taliban.”
Scheduled close air support sorties supported planned movements ranging from convoys
to major assault operations. As the ground force activity increased, so did the presence
of and activity of fighters, ISR, and other forces of airpower. June 2006 marked a big
leap in effort. In that month, air forces recorded 141 CAS strikes with munitions dropped.
That was more than double the May total of 59 strikes, and significantly more than the 17
CAS strikes in Iraq. “We have seen more direct support in Afghanistan that is of a kinetic
effect than in Iraq of late,” North said in June.43 In July, the count rose to 216 strikes and
remained above 200 per month for the rest of 2006.
For all that, no one could quite bring himself to declare the obvious—Washington again
had a war on its hands. Washington’s focus on Iraq was so strong that Afghanistan
could not seriously break into the public consciousness. Probing questions about the
increased activity began in earnest in the summer of 2006, but the U.S. and its allies
largely deflected them. “Well, I think if you look at the number of terrorists and Taliban
and al Qaeda that are being killed every month, it would be hard for them to say that
the coalition forces and the Afghan security forces were losing,” Rumsfeld said in July

2006.44 He acknowledged the increase in violence but insisted that a large part of it was
“seasonal” and was merely a secondary effect of greater pressure being applied by U.S.
and NATO forces.
Karzai spoke more willingly of the root causes of rising political violence. “The increase
in terrorist activity in Afghanistan, and especially in [certain] parts of the country, has both
internal and external reasons,” said the Afghan chief executive.45 The “internal reasons,”
he said, were the weakness of the Afghan police forces in the outlying districts— especially
in the country bordering Pakistan—and the “continuation of supply, ideological motivation,
training ground, and all that for terrorists and radical elements.”
Into this fluid situation came still more NATO forces. Plans called for ISAF to take over
security in the area of the southern provinces of Afghanistan—a hotbed of Taliban activity.
Instead of sticking exclusively with the mission of security assistance and reconstruction,
America’s allies set about taking on a significant combat test. NATO formally took over
the southern Afghanistan mission on Aug. 1, 2006. NATO was moved into a lead position
by the outcome of a special conference on Afghanistan held in London in early 2006. The
resulting “Afghanistan Compact” established ambitious goals for security, the buildup of
the Afghan army, and reduction in narcotics trade. The goals were to be met by the end of
2010. The compact committed NATO’s ISAF to continue strong support for security and
to extend provincial reconstruction efforts.
It was a tough assignment from the start, the reality of which could be discerned in ways
large and small. For example, a Royal Air Force report noted, “One Danish joint tactical air
controller attached to a British Army unit in Sangin for a month in July 2006 requested air
support on more than 200 occasions, 82 of which resulted in weapons being released.”46
Within days of the formal stand-up, NATO/ ISAF was embroiled in events leading to a
heavy military push—Operation Medusa. This major operation would produce a heavy
dose of air strikes concentrated in the area around Kandahar. The operation caused
expenditure of more ordnance in a few weeks than was expended in Iraq during all of that
year. With Operation Medusa, NATO forces got more than they bargained for.
Medusa was the Western alliance’s first out-of- area ground campaign since NATO
was established in 1949. It was fought out on terrain that was important to the Taliban.
Surprisingly, the Taliban on this occasion switched from its normal insurgent tactics to
attempt a more or less conventional pitched battle. “This was an offensive operation that
was generated by the Taliban and forces who oppose our presence, oppose the Karzai
government and decided to engage NATO in perhaps its first real operational ground test
in a long, long time,” said U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, who was then NATO’s
Supreme Allied Commander Europe and commander of U.S. European Command.47
The focus was a pocket of Taliban fighters dug in around what Jones called “the Pashmul
pocket,” 30 miles west of Kandahar in the Arghandab valley. The villages there had a
reputation for holding off the Soviet military forces throughout the 1979-89 Soviet-Afghan
War. The area was also reported to be home base for several hard-core Taliban figures.
Special operations forces had conducted sweeps there, but neither the Afghan National
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Army nor NATO had a formal ground presence there. Little of the Western reconstruction
aid had reached into the area. Perhaps with some of those factors in mind, the Taliban
mounted a serious effort to hold positions southwest of Kandahar in Panjwaye and Zhari.
Signs that this might eventuate had been coming in throughout summer 2006. “The
Taliban had exploited our arrival to try effectively to deter us from doing our job,” said
ISAF Commander Richards in his October 2006 briefing. “That meant that we had to fight,
and fight we have.” Canadian forces of the 1st Royal Canadian Regiment swept into the
area in late August. Abizaid reported that these Canadian units “put a battle group down
in the southern parts of Kandahar that were areas we really hadn’t patrolled extensively.”
Almost immediately, they found themselves in an all-night firefight against a concentration
of Taliban near Masum Ghar. What happened, explained Canadian Lt. Col. Omer Lavoie,
was “the Taliban, seeing our vehicles up on our hill and not liking the idea, decided to
launch a fairly significant attack.”48
The tactic backfired, spectacularly. NATO forces launched their counterattack on Sept.
2, 2006. First, Canadian soldiers advanced to two interim objectives and opened fire on
Taliban positions to draw a response. When the Taliban tried to mount a counter thrust,
they were hammered by airpower and artillery. Into the melee swarmed a mix of aircraft
typical for Afghanistan operations: U.S. Air Force A-10 attack aircraft and B-1B bombers,
U.S. Navy F/A-18E/Fs, RAF GR-7s, and French M-2000s. On Sept. 2, the A-10s and
B-1s dropped general purpose bombs, laser guided bombs, and GPS guided Joint Direct
Attack Munitions onto the Taliban targets.49 For good measure, the A-10s strafed with 30
mm cannon and the RAF GR-7s expended rockets.
The Taliban had good ground to defend. As the Canadians described it: “There were
interconnected systems of irrigation ditches that look pretty much like a deep, wide trench
system. Plus, real trench systems and fortified compounds and tunnels and endless
bisecting tree lines and fields of corn and dense marijuana growing so high you could
only see the antennae of the Canadian vehicles as they moved around the battlefield.”50
Here, all signs were that the Taliban wanted to draw the multinational forces into a near-
conventional battle, in hopes of inflicting a true defeat but in expectation of at least inflicting
painful casualties. A NATO spokesman later told of finding trenches and fortifications that
clearly implied the Taliban planned to make a good stand—“bashing their heads against
us,” as Richards put it.51
They engaged through the day again on Sept. 3 at multiple locations around the Pashmul
pocket. The B-1s in the fight would release mixes of 500-pound and 2,000-pound JDAMs.
A-10s conducted multiple passes, using laser guided GBU-12s, general purpose bombs,
and strafing rounds against the Taliban locations. The air arm laid down a constant
curtain of fire support to troops on the ground. “[The] expenditures focused on multiple
extremists’ locations, ending the engagement,” noted the day’s mission summary put out
by U.S. Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF).52

For NATO, the biggest surprise was “the change in tactics, because they decided to
stand and fight in a fairly conventional linear sense,” Jones said.53 The pace of air strikes
picked up in response. Strike sorties averaged 38 a day in Afghanistan. Heavy air strike
activity continued through Sept. 5. As the fighting slackened off, a Predator UAV and
pairs of Navy F/A-18s kept constant overwatch of the area. NATO was taking no chances
because, as Jones had said, “the tenacity of the resistance is a little bit of a surprise.”54
The Taliban offensive was, indeed, renewed with another ground attack on Sept. 8.
As fighting with the Taliban intensified, JTACs on the ground called in Air Force B-1Bs
and fighters from the Air Force, Navy, and other coalition services. All of them expended
ordnance on targets near Musah Qal’eh and Now Zad. These had a great impact. JTACs
reported that the proper placement of a GBU-38 or GBU-12 munition on a target quite
often ended the ground engagement.
Through mid-September 2006, Central Air Forces had recorded more than a thousand
weapons expended in Afghanistan. The NATO force officially claimed 512 Taliban dead
with another 136 captured.55 Operation Medusa was judged a NATO success.
Still, the leaders of the NATO units quickly reassessed the requirements of their military
forces. For example, Operation Medusa caused Canada to send more forces to Afghanistan,
as well as Leopard tanks, countermortar systems, combat engineers, and straight-leg
infantry. “We’re all aware that conditions have changed,” Gen. Rick Hillier, Chief of the
Canadian Defence Forces, said after the battle.56 “We saw a change in [Taliban] tactics
where they really moved from a guerrilla warfare type style, a counterinsurgency, to some
conventional techniques.”
True to form, NATO forces and airpower were engaged in other provinces at the same
time of Operation Medusa. In Operation Mountain Fury, to name but one example, NATO
forces used heavy artillery and attack helicopters to pound insurgent routes in eastern
sectors of Afghanistan.57 Throughout the operations in all regions, NATO forces relied on
increased air strikes. The impact of “airpower, especially American, very often made the
difference,” a NATO observer later commented.58
From the outcome of Medusa, Richards concluded that the Taliban was not a “strategic
threat” capable of deposing the regime in Kabul or Kandahar.59 Conventional military
operations by NATO were successful. In fact, the Taliban reverted immediately to other
tactics, using suicide bombers and IEDs in the days after the operation concluded. Richards
described the outcome of Operation Medusa as producing a Western “psychological
ascendancy” over the Taliban. He acknowledged the presence of foreign fighters but
judged that “right now al Qaeda is not a big problem here inside Afghanistan.”
However, Operation Medusa erased any doubt that the war in Afghanistan had taken on
a new character. Medusa had also brought collateral damage to the villages and stirred
the qualms of many partner nations. The intensity of the conventional fight led to a
bigger damage footprint. Air strikes drew particular ire in the world press. “There has been
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battlefield damage largely because of where the Taliban went,” noted Gen. David Fraser,
commander of Canadian Forces in southern Afghanistan.60 He added, “We will go back
out there and we will help rebuild that.”
At this point, the view of USCENTCOM boss Abizaid was that the Taliban did not represent
“a mortal danger” to the Karzai government.61 Yet he added, “Certainly at this stage in the
campaign, we’d hoped to be at the point where we were doing more development and
less fighting.” Year-end tallies underscored the fact that the allies were in for a hard slog.
In Iraq, air strikes totaled 229 for the entire calendar year of 2006. In Afghanistan, the
number for the same period was 1,770 strikes.62 Other applications of airpower such as
low passes, shows of force, and, most of all, strafing, were not included in these counts.
To get a sense of the new importance of strafing, consider the experience of Carrier
Air Wing 7 embarked on USS Eisenhower. This air wing from Nov. 6 to Nov. 14 flew
190 sorties in support of coalition ground forces in Afghanistan.63 In all, they logged 51
strafing passes, many of them dipping as low as 2,000 feet AGL. Also key to their work
was the expenditure of 26 flares as called for by ground controllers. Their totals of 51
laser-guided GBU-12s and 27 GBU-38s rounded out a busy month and accounted for a
sizeable fraction of the air component’s total of 201 weapons expended.
During the first week in action, Air Force and Navy fighters strafed insurgents firing
at coalition forces. They dropped laser-guided and satellite-precision GBU-38s on
personnel sites, compounds, and weapons caches. They linked with controllers on the
ground via ROVER (remotely operated video enhanced receiver) sets, streaming real-
time video between cockpits and ground controllers’ laptops. They delivered close air
support in close visual range to troops under fire—Type I CAS. They delivered laser
guided bombs and GPS weapons on targets from medium altitude and skimmed near
the ground at speeds over 400 mph on multiple strafing passes. When the friendly forces
requested them, they shot flares at low altitudes to press insurgent forces into breaking
off engagements. They delivered close air support for ground troops medically evacuating
a wounded soldier in close proximity to the enemy.
One mission in mid-November stood out. Insurgents ambushed a patrol of friendly forces
and pinned the patrol down in the open. The fighter that was called in to help emptied its
gun in four consecutive, low-level strafing passes to give friendly forces the covering fire
needed to move to a secure position.
The operations of 2006 amounted to a caution to the resurgent Taliban that massing forces
against NATO forces did not pay off and was most unwise. “Every time the enemy has
massed in this past year, they have suffered devastating defeats in large numbers and
yet produced no or little to no casualties in the ISAF forces,” commented Army Maj. Gen.
Benjamin C. Freakley, commander, Task Force 76.64 In fact, it well suited the alliance to
keep the fight in Afghanistan more in the nature of a running battle. The more the Taliban
forces moved, the better the chance for focusing air assets on them.

In January 2007, Afghanistan was in the throes of a winter war pause that normally lasted
through May. With NATO engaged in the action, however, there was no drop-off. Air strikes
employing weapons (other than 20 mm and 30 mm strafing) still totaled 178 in January
2007 and 163 in February. NATO was prepared for continuing its comprehensive mission.
“We have been into more valleys and remote locations in the last year than probably in
any area since this began in 2001,” said Freakley.
Increased Taliban activity was greeted with yet more airpower. Air strikes would double
during 2007, but this was just one indicator of a more comprehensive effort to generate
more dispersed ground force operations throughout Afghanistan. The air activity was
linked directly to the surge of operations on the ground. “From 2006 to 2007 we doubled
the amount of weapons released because of deliberate [ground] operations,” said North.65
On March 6, 2007, NATO launched Operation Achilles.66 A force of nearly 5,000 NATO
soldiers and 1,000 Afghan troops struck against an insurgent concentration in northern
Helmand province after Taliban clustered there in February. From March through the end
of May, NATO forces carried out several missions. In one of these actions, Royal Marines
cleared a Taliban concentration near the Kajaki hydro-electric dam.
In March, air strikes ramped back up to a total of 310. Combat aircraft such as the F-15E
did everything from watching over convoys to providing shows of force for fire bases and
delivering a big punch when needed. Events of March 30 revealed just how versatile a big
aircraft such as the B-1 bomber could be in close support. A convoy vehicle broke down,
and a B-1 performed a low-pass show of force to warn insurgents not to advance. Nearby,
another convoy was taking small-arms fire until the B-1 arrived to perform another show
of force; the Taliban broke off and fled. Next, the B-1, switching to its ISR mode, spotted
insurgents near Nuresanr and alerted a JTAC of their location. (North said, “The Sniper
pod on the B-1 is amazing.”) Then the B-1 switched back to providing armed overwatch
for yet another convoy.67
The Taliban, too, were trying to increase their firepower. “We have intercepted weapons
in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran,” the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, reported in April 2007.68 He described
them as mortars and C-4 explosives, linked to Iran because of their markings. “We do
not know with the same clarity we know in Iraq who is delivering those weapons or who
is involved,” Pace said. The Taliban could not, however, follow through on claims that it
would launch another major offensive like the one seen in Operation Medusa. Instead,
suicide attacks and IED emplacements rose.
Thus, there was all the more reason for U.S. and NATO forces to press hard to find and
clear Taliban concentrations in the most dangerous provinces of Afghanistan.
224
Teamwork
By 2007 and 2008, American and allied airpower in Afghanistan handled the increased
operational tempo of the war and provided direct action and support of all kinds, at all
levels. In these years, the war in Afghanistan had reached its turning point. So had the
role and employment of airpower.
In Operation Anaconda in March 2002, airpower had helped U.S. and other forces on
the ground prevail against an unexpectedly large concentration of Taliban and al Qaeda
forces fighting from prepared positions on craggy peaks. The tactical performance of
air and land forces in the crisis had been superb. Yet all agreed the preplanning and
coordination between air and land forces had been woefully lacking. Five years later, air
and land component relationships had changed. As combat in Afghanistan increased, the
workings of air and land power there grew increasingly joint and coordinated, with airmen
working to bring more sophisticated applications to the fight. It was one of the more
remarkable of the war’s many developments.
How, in fact, does the CAS system work? It was running smoothly as the principal
operations of 2007 began. North explained, “Our No. 1 calling is TIC—troops in contact.”
When NATO forces are engaged, the top priority “is to put an airplane overhead,”
North added. Putting an airplane overhead begins with the ISR resources assigned to
Afghanistan. Operational summaries showed that, in a typical case, six or seven aircraft
would support each day’s operations there. The full suite of resources from Air Force
Compass Call C-130s to Navy E-2C Hawkeyes might fly on any given day. Signals
intelligence, electronic intelligence, and images would flow back to tactical and higher
headquarters. Predators and later Reapers provided increasing amounts of full-motion
video to keep track of ground force activity.
ISR tasking for imagery such as full-motion video most often followed tips from other
sources. Ground forces might call in such a tip, or other signals intelligence might provide
the cue. Lt. Col. Michael Downs, an ISR specialist, wrote of the process for Central
Command’s theater: “For instance, a ground unit might receive a [human intelligence]
tip indicating presence of the enemy in a certain location. To confirm the tip, a battalion
may request ISR support from the CFACC to locate that activity.”69 Tips often gave the
imagery platform a better shot at finding the item of concern. Hence, the increased activity
of ground forces tended to generate an upswing in requests to survey particular areas.
For close air support, the ticket for getting airpower overhead was a place on the Joint
Tactical Air Strike Request. The task of fulfilling those requests would begin days before
the strike was needed. The CAOC assigned aircraft on a routine basis to patrol the skies
of Afghanistan. Many USAF and coalition fighters were now based at airfields like Bagram
in Afghanistan. Air Force A-10s and F-15Es as well as RAF GR7s were the principal
platforms working out of local airfields. France, the Netherlands, Italy, and other NATO
allies also rotated fighter and other strike aircraft in and out of Afghanistan under NATO

auspices. B-1s continued to operate from a base in another country. Navy F/A-18s from
an aircraft carrier in the North Arabian Gulf often joined the daily patrols, depending on
CAOC allocations across the theater.
Air planners next aligned potential sorties to ground force maneuver plans. In the
planning phase with ground operators, air commanders coordinating the tasking order
first synchronized with preplanned ground force action, such as a convoy movement
or major combat events. For Afghanistan, USAF co-located its 455th Expeditionary
Wing commander with the land component’s two-star combined joint task force (CJTF)
commander. “They sit side by side and work together every day,” North said. He
characterized it as a “very good tactical and operational relationship—based on trust,
faith, and confidence.”
Having the air and land components working hand in hand was essential to meet the
diversity and volume of joint tactical air strike requests. While close air support and
ISR aircraft flew routine schedules based on anticipated need, “an awful lot of ad hoc”
requests came in, according to North. Activity at a contingency operating base or forward
operating base would often feature a relatively small movement of forces, creating what
North termed an “unplanned” troops-in-contact situation—the primary driver of air strike
requests. (“We never really plan to have troops in contact,” he noted.) TICs generated
the lion’s share of air strike activity. “Sometimes they turn a corner and get shot at,” North
said of the small unit activity. Other times, ground forces may have an intelligence tip from
one of many sources and “they want to bring airpower to it,” he said.
Requests for support flowed through the theater air control system (TACS), which was
used to find and contact the nearest airplane compatible with the radio frequency of the
JTAC on the ground. “Then they are off and running,” North explained. “As quickly as they
can talk to the JTAC, they can start working the solution.”
Typically, JTACs are the masters of close air support. Several recent advances have
made their product that much more precise and rapid. One is digital CAS. Digital CAS is
a loose grouping of systems having the same aim: to extend reach of aircraft to the exact
spot at which ground forces need air support or air strikes. With digital CAS, much of the
transmission of location data is automated and displayed for multiple users.
The innovative ROVER was one of the first new systems to link aircraft displays to a
backpack ground terminal. With this kind of lash-up, an aircraft could send down full-
motion video of a target area. More recent developments include the addition of Falcon
View, a system capable of integrating GPS and laser designation data. The Digital
Precision Strike System is another addition; it replaces voice-transmitted delivery of
location data. JTACs also have the ability to tap into a secure Link 16 tactical data link
and send location data and other information for troops in contact. A portable air support
operations center gateway extends battlefield reach beyond line of sight and offers an
uplink to aircraft equipped with a situation awareness data link (SADL) or Link 16. This
shortens the kill chain, reduces human error and improves situational awareness for
226
pilots, aircrew members, and tactical air control party (TACP) members, said MSgt. Dave
Howard, a TACP who leads the field’s modernization efforts at Electronic Systems Center,
Hanscom AFB, Mass.70
The new systems bring data to those who usually need them most—the JTACs and the
forces on the ground. The CAOC also makes certain that all aircraft flying have a video
downlink. As a result, “the JTAC at the [tactical operations center] can clear Type II CAS,”
said North. He said this greatly increases efficiency and added, “They can gain [positive
identification] and clear collateral damage estimates to allow weapons release.”
In the past, groups of Army Special Forces or Army Rangers usually would take a JTAC
with them on the way to an objective. However, the expanding number of conventional
forces in Afghanistan changed requirements for the JTACs, placing a premium on their
being able to handle multiple engagements, for example. Now, a JTAC sitting in the
tactical operations center might be able to shape the battle more quickly than would be
the case were he out in the field.
JTACs by nature prefer to be out with the Army. “A lot of guys really hate staying back
and not being out on the objective with the Army,” said MSgt. Thomas Gorski, a JTAC
instructor with the Air Force’s 6th Combat Training Squadron.71 However, a JTAC located
in the TOC often has better situation awareness due to the digitized resources at his
fingertips. “Conventional brigades have so much going on and we can’t be everywhere
at once,” noted Gorski. Having that breadth of capability at the TOC greatly increases
flexibility for the ground forces.
For example, a JTAC there may roll data from a joint fires observer into a decision for
Type II CAS. Lt. Col. Red Walker, director of operations for the 6th CTS at Nellis AFB,
Nev., explained that, for Type II or Type III CAS, accurate data from the JFO may be
the piece needed to allow for an air strike.72 (The decision rests firmly with the JTAC.)
In contrast, situation awareness for the JTAC on dismounted maneuver can be much
more limited, and thus the chance of gaining air support could be slimmer. Consequently,
ground commanders often want the JTAC in the tactical operations center. “It all depends
on the Army’s intent,” said Gorski.
By mid-summer 2007, the extent of the military challenges in Afghanistan had become
everywhere apparent. In one bloody attack, Taliban forces killed 24 civilians.73 NATO
responded with an air strike that inadvertently killed seven Afghan children.74 On June 22,
Afghan officials announced the deaths of 25 more civilians who had been caught in the
warfare between NATO and Taliban forces.75 Taliban fighters had launched an attack on
a British outpost under cover of darkness then fled into the residential area of Chora. The
ensuing small arms battle was backed up with close air support. NATO forces reported the
strikes had killed insurgents; Afghan officials claimed civilians died, too. “This past week
has been very tough,” said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative of
the United Nations Secretary General in Afghanistan. He added: “I’ve seen the reports.
In the Chora attack, the Taliban literally slit the throats of men, women, and children and
burned the bodies, but there was also close air support that killed civilians.”

News on the fighting in Afghanistan still rarely made headlines, at least in comparison
to Iraq. This reflected, in large part, the clandestine nature of ongoing operations. Also
contributing was the fact that the fighting had spread to so many different areas in so
many provinces; this made it hard for newsmen and others to trace the course of the
battle as a whole. What did in fact tend to break through to the public were the most tragic
instances of civilian casualties. As a result, the conflict in Afghanistan was becoming best
known for such spectacular events. Many were caused by the Taliban—suicide bombings
and detonation of IEDs. Others were events involving NATO and coalition use of force.
The media’s fascination with casualty counts had to be seen, at least in part, in light of
the lack of any other way to measure what was going on in the war.
Airpower in particular came in for frequent criticism. In late June, U.S. Army Brig. Gen.
Joseph L. Votel, deputy commanding general for operations of Combined Task Force 82,
shed light on the actions of ground forces calling in air strikes. Correctly, he put the onus
on the Taliban. Votel expressed utmost concern and responsibility for avoiding civilian
casualties. Those that did occur, he said, “are caused principally by insurgents who are
initiating activities in the direct proximity of villages or where civilians are located.”76 He
went on: “That, of course, makes it very, very difficult for our forces who are operating
out there, because they do have a responsibility to respond. They have a responsibility
to protect themselves and their forces.” Votel emphasized that U.S. and NATO air and
ground forces followed very strict procedures designed to limit collateral damage.
For its part, the Taliban had no such qualms. Votel pointed out that about 60 percent
of the IEDs emplaced by the Taliban and their associates killed Afghan civilians rather
than Afghan or foreign military forces. Votel granted that some did inflict casualties on
NATO—but the proportion was small enough to make the tactic “barbaric” in his words.
Nor was the air strike which had resulted in the deaths of children quite what it appeared
on the surface. Votel explained that it had in fact been a significant raid. “With respect to
that operation, we did capture a number of insurgents ... and have brought them in for
questioning,” he said. Beyond this, “there were several others that were killed as a result
of that [operation.] We did not necessarily get all the individuals we were going after in
that particular operation, but we continue to work that very, very hard.”
North emphasized that the airpower forces on duty in Afghanistan have made good use
of the data streams available to them. Digital sharing through Link 16 gave “tremendous
situation awareness in the F-15, A-10, F/A-18, and coalition aircraft,” he observed.77
The general described how the pilots of aircraft sitting on ground CAS alert could call on
the Link 16 data coming back from other sources as soon as they were scrambled. With
such data, they could get a pretty good picture of how the troops- in-contact situation was
unfolding.
In Afghanistan, many aircraft at any given time are airborne, seeking to carry out
preplanned roles dictated by joint tactical air strike requests. Their goal was to get to the
area and make contact with the JTAC in order to fill the request within a specified amount
of time. Commanders obviously declined to say exactly what that time goal was. However,
North said of the strike aircraft response time: “Characteristically, it is well inside the time
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allocated to have the aircraft with the JTAC.” The presence of experienced aircrews is an
advantage in this respect. “These guys rove their allotted airspace and go to it time and
time again,” North said of those air crews flying CAS sorties in the theater today. “Our
aviators know it like the back of their hands.”
The presentation of data in the cockpit was of a quality to facilitate the limitation of collateral
damage. “Every plane, manned or unmanned, has a targeting pod,” said North. “Scope
presentation on the pods sizes circles” sufficient so that “we can clear for clear field of
fire,” explained North. In essence, the clarity of images delivered by the pods would allow
crews to see the presence of persons other than the targeted insurgents. Similarly, the
use of a programmable fuse allowed the aircrew in a cockpit to select a delayed setting
that would help to contain blast impact. “You can use a 500-pound bomb and delay the
fuse 10 to 15 milliseconds and bury the bomb,” North said of this technique. A weapon
that penetrated the surface would create a much smaller blast effect.
The airman and the soldier on the ground had become co-equals in the execution of an
air strike. In fact, the ground commander on the scene had the final say in any such air
attack. “There is not a weapon dropped without the ground commander’s final initials to
validate and certify that we have [positive ID], we know what we want to drop on,” North
said.
However, there was one principal exception to the dominance of ground forces in air
tasking, and that was in the prosecution of dynamic and time-sensitive targets. These
often were strikes aimed at insurgent or terrorist leadership. It could take days to collect
the intelligence for such a strike. In that case, the CAOC kept the lead due to the tight link
with the ISR division. The fusing of various intel sources for final, actionable intelligence
tended to rest with air component assets.
It was during this period that USAF perfected a new system for precision airdrop. Sporadic
airdrops formed into a steady pattern in the second half of 2005. Early in the year, for
example, three C-130s dropped 68,000 pounds of drinking water in support of a civic aid
mission. July 2005 saw a handful of smaller troop resupply drops. By autumn of that year,
however, it was common for aircraft to drop 40,000 or 50,000 pounds of troop resupply to
forces in eastern, central, or southern Afghanistan.
The year 2006 brought about the real expansion in both the numbers and magnitude of
airdrops. The mission was shifting from emergency to routine resupply. However, the
danger of making these drops was intensifying as a result of the surge of Taliban insurgent
activity. “Back in 2006, we were doing a lot of [cargo drops] within anti-aircraft artillery and
small-arms range,” said North, and aircraft sometimes took battle damage. The growing
threat was starting to put aircrews and aircraft at risk. North urged Air Mobility Command
to speed up the development and delivery to Afghanistan of the joint precision airdrop
system (JPADS).

Later that year, C-130s began employing this highly accurate system, major components
of which had been developed by both the Air Force and the Army. The key to the system’s
precision is an airborne guidance unit that can steer the parafoil along a planned trajectory,
making adjustments in flight as necessary. A C-130 airlifter flew the first combat JPADS
drop in Afghanistan on Aug. 31, 2006.78 For airmen, JPADS improves survivability
by permitting higher altitude airdrops above many types of ground fire. Accuracy was
excellent. Cargo typically landed in “an area the size of a football field,” according to
North.
C-17s began making combined JPADS and Screamer drops in May 2007 in Afghanistan.
(A “screamer” is a steerable bundle of container delivery systems, guided by GPS.)
“The system was amazing to watch,” said SSgt. Derek Howard, the crew’s evaluator
loadmaster.79 “When the bundles departed the aircraft and the chutes deployed, you could
instantly see them turning in what appeared to be a formation as the guidance system
began steering the bundle directly over the drop zone.” As an official Army statement
made plain, JPADS “has saved soldiers lives by offsetting ground convoy requirements
and reducing rotary wing sorties intended for airdrop operations.”80
It should not be, but perhaps is, necessary to point out that none of this can legitimately
be described as “airpower lite,” as is sometimes heard. Fighting and defeating hard-core,
bitter-end Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan’s forbidding terrain has required
a broad spectrum of airpower tactics, forces, and units. “Lots of times, in the mountains
... the folks are dug in,” explained North. “You drop munitions until you get the effects
desired. Sometimes it takes a lot to get the effect. Sometimes it takes only one bomb.”
Overall, he added, “We have met the enemy, and we have had fantastic results.”
Miles to Go
Airpower met the growing needs of NATO forces in Afghanistan through 2008 and into
2009—and a good thing. At the start of the era of President Barack Obama, the new
Commander in Chief, the war showed no signs of a slowdown. There could be no letup
in the employment of airpower or any lessening of its central role in the ground scheme
of maneuver. It looks as if Washington is in for a long fight.
Over the preceding year, operations continued at a high tempo. “We did 78 airdrops in
one month,” North said. The year’s total would climb to 16.5 million pounds of supplies
delivered by precision airdrop in the theater, most of it in Afghanistan. “Clearly, we’re
forecasting 2009 to have much more,” said North of the airdrop requirements.
By June of 2008, statistics indicated that enemy attacks were still going up, compared
with 2007. “We’ve had about a 40 percent increase in kinetic events,” said U.S. Army
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force-101 and
commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, defining those events as “literally the
number of enemy attacks that we’ve had on our coalition and Afghan partners.”81 The
insurgency was not only growing but also changing in character. As Schloesser explained
it, the enemy force now comprised a mix of several groups—not just a Taliban drawn from
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a fairly narrow slice of Afghanistan but also Taliban (which means “students”) of Pakistan,
other Pakistan insurgent groups, and other Afghan insurgents such as the Haqqani
group. On top of this were the terrorist outfits such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, native to Kashmir.
“Clearly al Qaeda’s involved in some cases,” reported Schloesser and added: “You’re
seeing a mix on the battlefield. In some cases there are communications between two
or three groups. In some cases they are working together very loosely, trying to achieve
what I would call battlefield effects, and we are focused on them.”
For airmen, a major task in Afghanistan was trying to sift through terrain and populations
to identify insurgent forces and patterns of movement. The increase in ISR operations
provided the capability to use either a wide aperture or narrow focus, depending on need.
Need for imagery may comprise electro-optical views, synthetic aperture radar images,
and, of course, full-motion video. For airmen, the central task was keeping a theater
watch while organizing assets to focus down to detail as tight as a single individual.
All ISR aircraft played their part in feeding the information fight. “Global Hawk is shooting
tremendous amounts of shots per day,” noted North. Both organic UAVs and Tier I Predator
and Reaper systems contributed to doubling the amount of full-motion video. Full-motion
video remained in high demand both for intelligence gathering and for overwatch and
battle management for forces on the ground. Predator and Reaper crews typically worked
both planned collection and local on-call tasking. “Troops on the ground will report a
contact and we will get our eyes there as quick as possible,” said Maj. Rick Wageman, a
Predator pilot deployed to Bagram as part of the local launch and recovery team for the
unmanned systems in Afghanistan.82
Elsewhere, flights of Air Force E-8C Joint STARS aircraft built detailed pictures of movement
within areas of interest. By transmitting the picture to multiple grounds stations, the Joint
STARS crews added to joint force situation awareness. “We work with the Army from the
corps level all the way down to the company level, integrating the ground movement
picture from the joint terminal attack controller to the brigade tactical operations center,”
said USAF Lt. Col. Mack Easter, commander of 7th Expeditionary Air Command and
Control Squadron.83
Stars of the ISR war remain Predator and its updated kin, the Reaper. “We’re using
Reaper as a multirole platform for both ISR and weapons,” said North. In a late 2008
briefing in which he offered narration of a Predator video, Army Maj. Gen. Michael Tucker
described the daily role of ISR. Tucker said: “If you look closely, there are two men in the
middle of the road in the center of the video. The one on the lower left is moving up and
down. He has a pickax, digging a hole in the center of the road. Another gentleman is
standing to his right. These IED emplacers were identified using various other detection
systems that we had cross-cued.”84 Tucker went on, “And then we used a Predator to
strike.” The IED work crew went up on a silent blast.
Another prime role for airpower reflected an almost traditional CAS mission: “danger
close” delivery of ordnance to troops about to be overrun. In Afghanistan, they tended to
be small groups, but the fighting was no less fierce.

Take the case of a SOF team inserted into the mountainous terrain of Nuristan province
in April 2008. These U.S. troops dropped in from helicopters at dawn and soon found
themselves facing a prepared enemy with plenty of ammunition. As Army Capt. Kyle M.
Walton told the Washington Post, “All elements were pinned down from extremely heavy
fire from the get-go.”85 The team carried small arms and grenade launchers. However, their
main source of heavy firepower during the running battle came from aircraft overhead.
It took the SOF team and its Afghan allies seven hours to move themselves and their
wounded down the slopes to an area in which helicopters could land and pull them out.
They called in airmen to drop 2,000-pound bombs 350 yards from their positions, using
the black smoke of the blasts to cover their movements. “Every time they dropped another
bomb, we would move down another terrace until we had basically leapfrogged down the
mountain,” Army MSgt. Scott Ford told the Washington Post. At one point, insurgents were
firing from positions just 25 yards away. In that case, the blast of another 2,000-pounder
allowed the Americans to move away.
The demands of engagements such as this one exerted a major effect on the scheduling
and use of aerial tankers. In situations such as this, tankers were sent forward to support
aircraft in need of refueling. “If something’s going on,” explained North, “we’ll just move
the tanker overhead.”
By North’s estimation, the longest day for NATO combat forces came on July 10, 2008,
when they and the Taliban engaged in a 60-hour-long troops-in-contact battle at Wanat
in northeast Kunar province. In this dustup, a group of soldiers from the 173rd Airborne
Brigade Combat Team were heading back to a small contingency operations base when
they were ambushed. Their firebase was really nothing more than some berms. Enemy
forces surged and pulled them into hand-to-hand combat. “Manned, unmanned, Navy,
Air Force,” every asset available began to deliver fire support and overwatch, said North
and added: “If air had not been there, the entire firebase would have been overrun. There
were a lot of weapons dropped dangerously close.” Army joint fires observers did much
of the initial work. When a Predator arrived overhead, it enabled a JTAC at the TOC to
call the strikes.
August brought another unusual mission. At the request of one of the provincial
reconstruction teams, NATO had taken on the task of moving a massive turbine for
construction on the Kajaki hydro-electric dam. This was in an area that British forces had
cleared of Taliban resistance in 2007. Now, it was time to rebuild. But the turbine had to
travel on the ground from Kandahar at only about three miles per hour. The route travelled
“right through the heart of bad-guy territory,” North said. Moving the turbine was NATO
force leader McKiernan’s top priority. From Aug. 28 to Sept. 2, 2008, coalition airpower
helped ensure safe transit for the convoy and its giant cargo. Of course, the slow-moving
convoy was just too tempting for the Taliban to resist. “Lots of air strikes, killed lots of
enemy trying to mass,” said North.
232
Again and again, such activities demonstrated the ability of highly refined and carefully
targeted airpower to support diverse ground force operations. Plans have been laid for
increasing the pace of activity in Afghanistan. For airmen, a big concern is adding to the
Afghan air bases’ capacity to handle more forces. The burden reaches across Air Force
specialties. Security forces are in constant demand, as are explosive ordnance disposal
specialists, combat engineers, contracting officers, and special RED HORSE construction
units. “There is no shortage of building requirements,” said North.
Remade
The demands of the war in Afghanistan have done more than harden the Air Force. They
have, along with the war in Iraq, helped produce a different kind of Air Force.
The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks sparked direct military action against Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan, which had become a safe harbor for al Qaeda. Determined to eliminate
this persistent threat to American security, the U.S. assembled a coalition to unseat the
Taliban government and, on Oct. 7, 2001, launched Operation Enduring Freedom. Later,
U.S. forces joined up with NATO units under the ISAF umbrella. Allied airpower, and the
U.S. Air Force specifically, was at the heart of that response. More than seven years on,
what has happened to that force?
The Air Force has constantly changed and adapted to provide the kinds of sophisticated
capabilities needed for fighting a strange war in Afghanistan. In the process, this combat-
hardened organization has become an Air Force unlike any other. What had been a Cold
War force garrisoned at large U.S., European, and Asian bases is now an expeditionary
force. For most of its members, packing up and setting up is a way of life—the only way
they have known.
While the changes wrought by this war are many and varied, there are five that stand out.
Each is at the core of operations today. All are having a profound impact on the current Air
Force and its role in joint operations and will continue to do so well into the future.
Precision. Laser guided weapons debuted in Vietnam and won popular acclaim in the
1991 Gulf War, yet USAF sent into battle in Desert Storm only about 150 fighters that
could self-designate laser guided bombs. Technological improvements have accelerated,
and the Air Force now fields an enormously powerful and versatile precision force. In
2003, USAF fighters in theater had the ability to employ precision weapons with laser
or GPS satellite guidance. Most important, the ubiquitous Joint Direct Attack Munition
was a combat-proven asset. B-52s and B-1s often carried a mix of weapons to give
air controllers a choice. After its debut in 2004, the new 500-pound JDAM became the
weapon of choice to support ground forces fighting in urban areas.
However, Afghanistan also has taught that it’s time to think of precision in combat support
airdrop, as well as strike. The joint precision airdrop system debuted in Afghanistan.
The system—a joint effort between the Army and the Air Force—allowed aircraft to drop
cargo more accurately, from much higher altitudes, and at greater speeds. After August
2006, the war saw a surge of precision airdrops staged in support of coalition and special

operations forces in Afghanistan. This is a major development in airpower, one that
opens up new possibilities for deploying forces with a lighter footprint and for conducting
relief supply missions in more places.
Nonlinear battlespace. No longer does the Air Force always operate from secure,
garrisoned bases situated well behind front lines. The Air Force and Army, for example,
agreed in 2005 to change the division of labor so that the Air Force is responsible for
defending its own overseas air bases, as is the case in Afghanistan. Mess halls, cargo
facilities, even ramps and taxiways presented tempting, presurveyed targets. The perimeter
at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan was a problem from the start and saw terrorist attacks
at or near the front gates. Air Force security forces have gone on the offense to keep the
perimeter and gate secure.
The fact that any airman may be in harm’s way led to an increase in expeditionary combat
skills that begins now in basic training. Fitness, firing weapons, and small unit discipline are
recognized as essential qualities for every airman in an emergency situation. Afghanistan
has helped to put paid to the idea of predictability. Airmen know that they will usually have
to operate in unpredictable and unsettled settings. The Air Force wants to train more
security forces for specialized expeditionary combat skills and procure everything from
mine-resistant vehicles to new handguns and body armor for the nonlinear battlefield. All
of this is intended to increase the individual airman’s chances of surviving conventional
attacks on the ground, in so-called “outside-the-wire” missions.
Unmanned air systems. The MQ-1 Predator and the newer, more capable MQ-9 Reaper
have left a big mark in Afghanistan. It is safe to say that none of the new medium- and
high-altitude UAVs were even a glint in the eye of top generals during the Cold War.
Despite years of experiments and research, it took most of the 1990s for the Air Force
to develop Predator into a capable platform. The high-altitude Global Hawk emerged
from the 1990s to play a dominating reconnaissance role in Afghanistan in 2001 and
beyond. The hours flown in search of Taliban and al Qaeda, and in supplying full-motion
video for ground forces, have convinced all but the most skeptical of their utility—at least
in uncontested airspace. The Air Force is fully committed to UAVs and has redoubled
Predator and Reaper crew production, accelerated acquisition, and stood up new units
for the mission.
The Air Force has given the Reaper an “attack” designation, signifying, as much as
anything could, how far unmanned systems have come. Reaper is that “lightweight
fighter” needed for the best mix of airpower. Autonomous air refueling is being pursued
in large part to extend the already impressive endurance of unmanned vehicles. UAVs
have been normalized within the Air Force. They are part of the Total Force; leaders
make efforts to ensure their crews have a normalized career path; upgrades and spirals
continue improvements in effectiveness. Yet the future of unmanned forces will require
effective Air Force stewardship to ensure the force of tomorrow continues to improve and
meet evolving requirements. Predators and Reapers operate today in benign airspace.
Future UAV missions may have to contend with hostile and defended airspace. It’s not
the same.
234
ISR fusion. It is difficult to assign a term to the revolutionary fusion of intelligence-
surveillance-reconnaissance products that now constitute daily fare in air operations
centers. Even Adm. Michael G. Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, struggled
to describe the impact of the “whole ISR piece” on current operations. What’s clear is
that USAF has been at the core of a series of revolutions in the ability to fuse ISR into a
powerful weapon.
In Afghanistan, the need for uninterrupted tracking of individuals, such as terrorist
ringleaders, led to rapid fusion of numerous information sources. Never before have
airmen been able to produce a comparable real-time product for commanders. A suite of
products and tactics is responsible. The fusion offers commanders such a powerful tool
that none will deploy or operate without this ISR picture in the future. Better ISR has an
amplifying effect, such as when JTACs can use it to control multiple airstrikes at the call
of forces on the ground.
Cooperative targeting. The Afghanistan War, with its vast operational spaces and small,
widely dispersed and highly exposed forces, has exerted a mighty influence on the way
USAF provides close air support for soldiers, marines, and commandos. Insurgent and
urban battles have honed air and ground cooperation like never before.
The air component has become the soldier’s deadliest guard dog, literally following patrols
to provide ISR or air attack as needed. The laptop-based ROVER system, developed
in the war in Afghanistan, allows airmen and ground controllers to share a real-time
video picture of a target they are tracking. This allows for stunning efficiency. Gains like
this have occurred before, of course. Today’s strategy hinges on air-ground integration.
Effective backing of deployed U.S. and allied ground forces around the world is key to
repositioning a much reduced U.S. force overseas.
For all the transformation that’s taken place, there is still a lengthy to-do list coming straight
from combat experience in the Middle East. Afghanistan is a big part of that. The Air Force
will continue to change because of that conflict.
Conclusion
Staying the course will take fortitude and a little luck. Americans may well grow weary
of the effort in Afghanistan. They will not be alone; Afghans, too, could well wear down
and throw in the towel. While that is not considered a high likelihood within policy-making
circles, it is not out of the question, either.
“This war has gone on for seven years,” Afghan President Karzai grumped in late 2008.86
He said: “The Afghans don’t understand anymore how come a little force like the Taliban
can continue to exist, can continue to flourish, can continue to launch attacks. With 40
countries in Afghanistan, with entire NATO force in Afghanistan, with entire international
community behind them, still we are not able to defeat the Taliban.”

Afghanistan in 2009 was at a turning point. Three years of intensifying operations backed
by highly refined airpower had taken NATO and U.S. forces ever deeper into the struggle
for control in key provinces.
With a big reinforcement planned, NATO and U.S. forces had their work cut out for them.
The solution lay beyond Afghanistan’s borders, of course. “It’s not possible to solve the
challenges internal to Afghanistan without addressing the challenges, especially in terms
of security, with Afghanistan’s neighbors,” said Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head
of U.S. Central Command and architect of recent combat successes in Iraq.87 “A regional
approach is required.”
Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe and also
head of U.S. European Command, confirmed in January that the effort in Afghanistan
could use more forces. Security “has to be in place before the rest can happen,” he said.88
“We have to be able to implement our strategy. One, clear out the insurgents; two, hold;
three, build. We are clearing. We don’t have enough to hold to allow the build.”
Building capacity with the Afghan National Army shapes up as a key element of the
strategy, too, but Craddock estimated it would take at least three years to increase their
capacity to a sufficient degree. “We can’t afford to wait three years,” he said. As a result,
more U.S. forces will have to fill out the strategy. Craddock expected them to focus on
the southern provinces. “We’ve got to have a greater density of forces to be able to hold
those communities,” he said.
One thing remained certain. Airpower in all its forms had the advantage of three years
of intensified combat building on nearly a decade of activity in Afghanistan. It was an
edge proven to enable victory from firefights to theater surveillance. As North put it, “Our
asymmetric advantage is we fly and the enemy doesn’t.”
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Focus On:
ABERRATIONS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
By Daniel L. Haulman. Reprinted by permission from Air Force

During the past decade of war, the Air Force did not have to fight for control of the
air. That is not normal.
Aerial combat was a prime feature of U.S. major warfare throughout the 20th century.
From 1918, when a U.S. Airman scored the first aerial victory, through 1999, U.S. Airmen
shot down some 17,500 enemy airplanes. These included 624 in World War I, 15,800 in
World War II, 894 in Korea, and 137 in Vietnam.
The 1990s wars against Iraq and Serbia were smaller, but U.S. pilots still shot down 48
aircraft—39 Iraqi and nine Serbian aircraft.
At the turn of the century, however, air-to-air combat vanished. The U.S. since 2000 has
waged two major wars, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, but no pilot became an ace.
Indeed, no one notched even a single aerial victory credit.
Airpower played significant roles in both of these recent wars, but fighting for air superiority
was not one of them. There were no air battles at all.
The total absence of aerial combat so far in the 21st century has led some to claim that
its day is gone forever, that expensive air superiority fighters and highly trained pilots are
no longer necessary. This view is almost certainly wrong.
Why has air combat not played a role in the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq? The answer:
Those wars were aberrations. War in the future probably will once again require the U.S.
to fight for air dominance—and not enjoy it from the beginning.
The first aberration occurred in Afghanistan.
On October 7, 2001, Washington launched Operation ENDURING FREEDOM against
the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, the protector of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda
terror organization. It was a mismatch in the air. The Afghan Air Force was so small that it
did not even merit an entry in the annual Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft for the years 1999
to 2002.
Without its own aviation industry, Afghanistan had long depended on other nations,
particularly the Soviet Union, for its aircraft. During the 1980s, as Moscow warred against
the Afghan people, guerilla fighters became adept at using small surface-to-air missiles
against airplanes.

A Plinking Campaign
During the 1990s, the emphasis within Afghanistan was on land combat between various
local entities, of which the Taliban was one. What was left of the old Afghan Air Force was
divided among the factions vying for control of the country. Spare parts to keep aircraft
functioning were in short supply, and flying training was extremely limited.
By 1996, Taliban fighters had conquered all but the far north of the country, but their share
of the surviving Afghan Air Force was small and weak. One estimate put the Taliban air
force at eight MiG-21s, eight Su-22s, several transports, and about 12 helicopters.
Whatever the true numbers—and the estimates varied wildly—many were simply out of
service, and only a handful of pilots remained.
U.S. military planners never once worried about the Afghan aviation arm as aerial
opposition. Indeed, the Afghan threat was far less than what U.S. pilots faced every day
enforcing the “no-fly” zones over Iraq.
However, those officers planning the Afghan war did have some concern the Taliban might
pack aircraft with explosives and fly suicide missions into U.S. military encampments.
Thus, when the U.S. struck Afghanistan, its military leaders were determined from the
outset to establish uncontested control of the air.
Among the 31 targets hit on the first night of the air war were Taliban airfields and aircraft.
Air bases known to be harboring MiG-21 and Su-22 airplanes were Shindand AB and
Mukurin AB. They were put out of commission.
Afghan air defenses were largely destroyed on that first night. Even so, for seven
consecutive days after the first night, U.S. Airmen took part in an “aircraft plinking”
campaign, the goal of which was to destroy, finally and to a certainty, every last enemy
military aircraft and helicopter in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon did not officially announce the death of the Taliban air force until Oct. 25.
In reality, the Afghan air arm had ceased to exist weeks earlier.
No Taliban aircraft got airborne to contest the coalition onslaught. In fact, no Taliban
aircraft got airborne at any time in the entire campaign. U.S. pilots had no opportunity to
shoot down enemy airplanes. The Taliban had few to begin with. What few they did have
were crushed within hours, even minutes.
Destruction of what little existed of the Taliban air defenses was so complete the United
States was able to employ, at a very early stage in the campaign, slow-moving and low-
flying helicopters, transports, gunships, and remotely piloted vehicles. These aircraft would
have been too vulnerable to use in this fashion had the enemy possessed or retained an
air force of even minimal effectiveness.
The second aberration came 17 months later, in Iraq.
238
President Bush launched a war to topple the despotic and dangerous regime of Saddam
Hussein, who had for years threatened his neighbors and who had defied United Nations
inspectors seeking evidence of the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.
Pilots of USAF aircraft entering Iraqi airspace at the opening of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM
on March 19, 2003, could not be sure the Iraqi Air Force would be as impotent as the
Afghan Air Force had been. After all, 12 years earlier, the Iraqi Air Force had been one of
the most powerful in the entire region.
Iraq’s air arm had fought well during the brutal 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. Early in the decade
of the 1990s it was one of the largest air forces in Southwest Asia, with well over 700
fixed wing combat aircraft. Iraq had purchased new and capable fighter aircraft, including
MiG-29s from the Soviet Union and Mirage F1s from France. Baghdad had improved
its air bases, increasing the size and number of runways and taxiways and constructing
hundreds of hardened aircraft shelters.
That rather formidable Iraqi Air Force, however, ran into a buzzsaw. It was called the
United States Air Force.
In Operation DESERT STORM—the Gulf War that unfolded between January 17 and
February 28, 1991—USAF pilots shot down 37 Iraqi aircraft—32 airplanes and five
helicopters. USAF and coalition aircraft also destroyed 254 additional Iraqi aircraft on
the ground. Aircraft such as F-111s and F-117s, armed with laser and television guided
bombs, destroyed 141 Iraqi aircraft in their shelters and another 113 in the open.
Counting airplanes that were flown in desperation to Iran, Baghdad lost 407 fixed wing
airplanes—more than half its prewar force.
The effect was devastating and long-lasting. The once-powerful Iraqi air arm went into a
long disintegration as a true fighting force—a fact that became only too apparent 12 years
later.
In the 2003 war, not one Iraqi warplane attacked the U.S. and coalition forces advancing
on the ground toward Baghdad. Complete aerial supremacy contributed to the quick
victory that toppled the regime of Saddam and placed U.S. and coalition military forces in
the enemy capital in less than one month.
Desert Strike
Even earlier, during the 1990s, the U.S. was aware of the drastically weakened condition
of the Iraqi Air Force. During those years, the U.S. and its coalition partners enforced no-
fly zones over northern and southern Iraq.
Saddam rarely launched aircraft to challenge United States aircraft patrolling the UN-
sanctioned no-fly zones over Iraq. Some cases, however, did arise.
At the end of 1992 and beginning of 1993, American F-16 pilots using advanced medium-
range air-to-air missiles shot down two more Iraqi airplanes when they mounted challenges.

In 1996, Iraqi troops advanced under the northern no-fly zone and seized the Kurdish city
of Irbil. In response, the U.S. opened Operation DESERT STRIKE. During that operation,
USAF B-52s launched 13 cruise missiles against Iraqi military targets, including air
defense and radar installations.
Another result of the Iraqi offensive in the northern no-fly zone was the extension of the
southern no-fly zone northward from 32 degrees north to 33 degrees north latitude. This
further restricted the space where the Iraqi Air Force could operate or train.
Iraqi flights were restricted also by another factor. During the late 1980s, Saddam had
sent 19 of his Soviet-made combat aircraft to Yugoslavia for refurbishing but was not able
to get them back because of United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Iraq after
its invasion of Kuwait. In September 1995, the UN Security Council had voted to extend
sanctions against Iraq that had been in place for five years. As a result, worn-out Iraqi
airplane parts could not be easily replaced, resulting in fewer operational warplanes.
Fearing attempted coups, the Iraqi dictator periodically purged his military leadership,
including some of the high-ranking officers in the Iraqi Air Force. Saddam wanted Iraq’s
military to be led by those unquestionably loyal to him. As a result, the Iraqi Air Force
lacked the leadership it needed to revive itself.
Saddam’s refusal in late 1998 to allow UN inspectors to continue their work in Iraq
prompted another set of U.S. and allied air attacks on Iraq. During Operation DESERT
FOX, the United States and Britain bombed Tallil Air Base and destroyed several Iraqi
remotely piloted aircraft that had been converted from trainers, presumably to deliver
chemical or biological weapons.
All of these factors further weakened the tattered remnant of the Iraqi Air Force that had
survived the Gulf War. And that remnant wasn’t much; in 2002, the Iraqi inventory totaled
267 aircraft, only 124 of them fighters, some small fraction of which were even combat-
ready.
The Most Expensive

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the Iraqi Air Force did not show up. It failed
to generate a single sortie. Allied air and ground forces operated without any opposition
in the air.
This striking absence of Iraqi Air Force opposition allowed the U.S. Air Force to use its
relatively vulnerable aircraft—A-10s and AC-130 gunships, for instance—without much
fear they would be shot down.
In the years since the start of the Afghan and Iraq wars, technological advances have
made it possible for remotely piloted aircraft to detect and destroy enemy forces on the
ground, even if those targets are moving. Pilots on the ground in Nevada have performed
air strikes against enemy targets on the other side of the world in Afghanistan and Iraq.
These capabilities tempt some to believe manned fighters are no longer necessary.
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However, remotely piloted aircraft are relatively slow and easy to shoot down. They are
no match for faster, better armed, and more durable manned fighters that would be more
likely to shoot them down than the other way around.
Future wars might well involve opponents with much more powerful air forces than those
of Afghanistan and Iraq. Former enemies such as China and Russia, for example, are
currently developing fifth generation fighter aircraft with stealth technology.
Air forces with such technology might challenge U.S. control of the skies over battlefields.
The skies themselves would be battlefields, with fighter aircraft clashing for control of the
air.
If the enemy ever gained air superiority, the dynamic of combat would change immediately.
Control of the air is the sine qua non of victory in modern warfare. A powerful enemy
fighter force, if not countered by a powerful U.S. fighter force, would destroy other allied
aircraft such as transports, helicopters, ISR aircraft, and remotely piloted aircraft.
In terms of national policy objectives, modern fighter aircraft are extremely expensive.
The lack of modern fighter aircraft, when war comes, would be even more expensive.

GENERAL MICHAEL E. RYAN
SERVICE BEFORE SELF
Upon his induction as chief of staff in October 1997, General Michael E. Ryan faced the
daunting task of bringing the USAF into line with the realities of the post–Cold War era.
One of these realities was that the USAF was the smallest Air Force since its founding in
1947, yet the nation’s strategy of selective engagement dictated that it be ready to fight
and win two nearly simultaneous major theater wars, while maintaining its commitments
to a growing string of seemingly permanent small-scale contingencies. In Ryan’s words,
“…we had done Desert Storm, Somalia, Bosnia, and it looked like a never-ending chain
of these things was going to occur…it didn’t look like there was any end.” The mismatch
between resources and requirements was forcing the men and women of the USAF into
a lifestyle characterized by high operations and personnel tempo at the expense of family
life. Drops in Air Force retention rates and recruitment indicated that the situation—if
allowed to go unchecked—could reach serious proportions. As he took his position as chief
of staff, General Ryan knew he had to act quickly and decisively, and so he implemented
several initiatives to relieve the stress of operations tempo on his force.
The concept needed to relieve the stress of the increasing operations tempo—in General
Ryan’s sights—was an expeditionary force; a force that would alleviate if not solve the
Air Force’s internal problems, but also one that would express to the nation what the Air
Force was and how it operated. To some the task was daunting, but his predecessor and
many others had already poured the footings of the concept by beginning development of
expeditionary forces for employment in Southwest Asia and elsewhere. Certainly General
Ryan was not hesitant to step out; as General Richard B. Myers said, “He was not afraid
to set course on a new heading.” General Ryan’s new course for the Air Force was
the Expeditionary Aerospace Force (EAF): A new way of doing business that improved
predictability and stability in personnel assignments and furnished the Service with a
powerful management tool to more efficiently align its assets with needs of the war
fighters—the regional combatant commanders.
During the planning period, General Ryan was most interested in the impact that EAF
would have on his people. In his words, “This was about family. If the family is disgruntled
because the [Service] member has no predictability in his life, they’re going to walk.” The
regular schedule of EAF rotations aimed to give the families predictability in their lives as
well as to provide the combatant commander with a superb air component. Additionally,
General Ryan expected EAF to address the issue of taking care of the families at home.
If one member of a team is gone, the family copes alone. If the whole team is deployed,
the families enjoy a synergy of support from within as well as from without. “So there is
an element of effectiveness on the line and one on the home front…you go in teams.”
The last essential part of the plan was making sure the Air Force clearly defined how
242
the EAFs would reconstitute after they returned from a rotation. A stand down period
was implemented at the beginning of each cycle in order to express General Ryan’s
philosophy that both man and machine needed time to recover after returning home.
With the goal to improve predictability and stability for his Airmen and families, and
after almost two years of planning development, the EAF structure began operations
on schedule on 1 October 1999 when EAFs 1 and 2 deployed. EAF was an idea whose
time had come, and as one historian noted, “Few changes introduced by an Air Force
chief of staff have flowed as smoothly through the corporate process as did the EAF.”
Role modeling and mentoring, as well as the tenets of leadership and followership—
heavily seasoned with common sense—flavored General Ryan’s leadership style as he
served the USAF and his nation, yet his strongest leadership skills can be found laced
throughout the implementation of EAF. According to his successor, General Jumper,
General Ryan’s strongest leadership skill was his selflessness. “Mike Ryan is the one
who inspired [people] and then backed them up completely.”
When originally designed this innovative program was entitled Expeditionary Air Forces
(EAF.) Today we call it Air Expeditionary Force (AEF.) Since its inception there have been
several changes to the program although the basic premise remains: build a program
that will meet the needs of the combatant commander while also taking care of the people
by providing predictability and stability for Airmen and their families.

Focus On:
JOINT FORCE MULTIPLIERS

America’s Airmen Transition to the Resolute Support Mission
By Maj Gen Jake Polumbo, USAF and Mr. Wesley Long, USAF.
Reprinted by permission from the Air and Space Journal. March -
April 2014
A nonstandard force of Airmen, both individual augmentees (IA) filling positions on
joint manning documents and joint expeditionary tasked (JET) Airmen, is deployed to
Afghanistan, helping transition the nation from current combat operations to the Resolute
Support mission. This transition focuses the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s efforts
more squarely on enabling Afghan forces to provide security for their nation through
“training, advising and assisting.” Airmen supporting the joint force through individual
augmentation are long-standing and predate the current Operation Enduring Freedom
mission. However, support to the joint force also includes a sizeable number of Airmen
who are individually tasked, trained, and deployed to conduct missions not always within
their core skill sets. The US Air Force’s support to the joint fighting team in Afghanistan is
as varied as it is important. Most Air Force support is provided by standard units conducting
normal missions within their core capabilities. For the most part, these standard-force
Airmen prepare, deploy, and operate as a unit. Requirements for JET Airmen, on the other
hand, have evolved from what was once considered a temporary solution to offset other
services’ manpower shortfalls to a permanent element of the Global Force Management
Allocation Plan. This means that filling JET taskings will remain a consideration long after
Afghanistan when the Resolute Support mission is terminated, and Airmen will continue
to under-take them with professionalism and pride. As we transition to a new phase of
operations in Afghanistan, now is the time to identify hard lessons won on the battlefield
while acknowledging outstanding achievements and contributions to the joint force by
nonstandard forces.
Sustaining the Joint Force

Across the board, Airmen contributed magnificently in the past dozen years around the
globe. When it comes to Afghanistan, though, our nonstandard forces faced numerous
challenges during their predeployment preparation and on the battlefield as they integrated
into unfamiliar units without the benefit of their normal Air Force support structure.
Identifying the challenges faced by our Airmen and working to provide solutions are a
fundamental aspect of leadership. The processes to train, prepare, and deploy JET and
IA Airmen have evolved over the years. Those predeployment challenges and solutions
are well cataloged.
244
As a former commander of the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force–Afghanistan (9
AETF-A), I witnessed the impact of these challenges and implemented corrective actions.
At the same time, I was proud to observe the determination and powerful capability of our
JET and IA Airmen firsthand. The battlefield experiences of our Airmen are critical as we
move forward into the next phase of the Afghanistan campaign.
Integration Begins with Training

Since JET and IA deployments are individually tasked and still not as widely understood
as standard air expeditionary force deployments, it is necessary to discuss basic
background information on the historical progression of JET deployments. The original
JET Airmen filled “in lieu of” (ILO) taskings to solve US Army manpower shortfalls in
support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004. All of these ILO taskings required some level
of predeployment training since the Airmen chosen had to conduct missions outside their
basic core skills. Moreover, because the ILO Airmen had to integrate into Army units on
the battlefield in Iraq, they needed to understand all of the unit differences between Air
Force and Army operations. The Army was responsible for providing this training then
and does so today.
In the chief of staff of the Air Force’s memorandum “Joint Expeditionary Tasking Term”
of 4 December 2008, Gen Norton Schwartz created the term JET and applied it to all
Airmen who fill jointly sourced solution requests for forces to “emphasize our contribution
to the fight with a single term that reflects our esprit and mission.” These JET and IA
deployments have supported Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New
Dawn. However, key general characteristics of all of these deployments remained largely
unchanged through the years. That is, as Airmen are individually tasked from across the
Air Force, they attend predeployment training provided by the US Army for combat and
mission skills. They then deploy and assimilate into joint or sister-service units widely
dispersed across the battlefield. The commanders of these units exercise tactical control
(TACON) of the JET and IA Airmen.
Deployment Across the Area of Operations

At the height of operations, the Air Force had more than 4,200 JET and IA Airmen deployed
to a large number of combat locations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, approximately 1,700
JET and IA Airmen are deployed in Afghanistan at more than 50 operating locations (see
the figure below), with about one-third of those locations having fewer than five Airmen
assigned. The challenge of commanding Airmen in such a low-density and scattered
environment seems obvious, especially when depicted against the map of Afghanistan’s
sparse infrastructure. In addition, JET and IA Airmen are deployed throughout the
US Central Command area of operations in support of other contingency operations;
furthermore, if history is an indicator of the future, they will continue to deploy around the
world in support of geographic combatant commanders.

As the commander in Afghanistan, I retained administrative control (ADCON) and
operational control (OPCON) of all JET and IA Airmen assigned to US Air Forces Central
Command (USAFCENT) in the Combined Joint Operating Area–Afghanistan. A basic
responsibility of a commander is ensuring the well-being of his or her Airmen. The 9
AETF-A commander has command authority over all Airmen assigned, both standard and
nonstandard forces.
Caring for and Tracking Airmen in the Fight

In a memorandum dated 31 May 2009, USAFCENT commander Gen Gary North
established JET air expeditionary units in Afghanistan with the primary intent of providing
specified ADCON over all deployed JET and IA Airmen. Although not stated in the memo,
his primary intent was to prevent the possibility of a “lost patrol.” In other words, to ensure
accountability, all Airmen would have and know the Air Force commander in their chain
of command. In turn, all commanders would know and track the Airmen under their
command.
By 2010 the 466th Air Expeditionary Group (466 AEG) and its three squadrons were
activated to assume this responsibility in Afghanistan. However, when I assumed
command of the 9 AETF-A in 2012, the 466 AEG had been scaled down to only one
squadron—the 966th Air Expeditionary Squadron, which moved to the Transit Center
at Manas, Kyrgyzstan, in an effort to reduce the footprint of Airmen in Afghanistan.
This initiative, necessary at the time, significantly reduced the commander’s battlefield
circulation capability and degraded direct outreach to each JET and IA Airman.
Airmen’s lack of direct access to their service’s chain of command caused problems. The
first indication of the difficulty was the increase in complaints made by Airmen after they
had returned to their home stations. These complaints included incidents of basic and
sexual assault. The fact they were not reported until after the Airmen redeployed was
unacceptable and indicated a deficiency within the chain of command.
Two actions were taken to correct this deficiency. First, under the authority of the
USAFCENT commander, I implemented what is now known as the Airman Blue Line
Program (ABLP) as the primary mechanism to define the roles and responsibilities of
the ADCON and OPCON command authority and to establish a clear chain of command
for each JET and IA Airman. The intent was to create an unbreakable but flexible “blue
line” as a link between Airmen and the US Air Force while they were deployed to another
service’s unit. The ABLP clearly assigned responsibilities of each participant at every
level of command, from the Airman all the way to the USAFCENT commander. Today the
ABLP is briefed to all JET and IA Airmen as they go through predeployment training and
again when they in-process at deployed stations in-theater.
246
Second, I reactivated the 466 AEG and returned squadron-sized elements to Afghanistan.
This action had multiple benefits. It not only enhanced unity of command and effort
within the 9 AETF-A but also increased the number and effectiveness of routine battlefield
circulations. Having a group in place allowed the O-6 commander to be on par with most
of the commanders of the TACON units where the JET and IA Airmen were assigned.
The solutions to these challenges were found in basic Air Force doctrine and other guidance,
but the lesson we learned is key for future operations. Moreover, the implementation
required advocacy at the highest level since adding the manpower back on the books in
Afghanistan was counter to the joint force commander’s intent. Most importantly, the cost
of inaction was not acceptable due to the potentially adverse impact on our Airmen.
CMSgt Frank Batten, 9 AETF-A command chief, acknowledges that one of the most
significant limitations is how JET/IA requests for forces (RFF) are revalidated and/or
turned off. He explained that after a position is validated (i.e., the Army has critically
manned jobs versus Air Force manning levels), recurring checks should ensure that the
RFF is still valid according to the original criteria.
Further, as the TACON commander determines the end of mission, there is no automatic
trigger to turn off the JET/IA RFF. During this transition, the Air Force must work with the
requesting service to determine when to manage the revalidation and/or drawdown of
the JET and IA positions. Additionally, OPCON responsibility currently does not allow the
TACON authority to rerole/relocate JET/IA Airmen—potentially a problem if Airmen are
being asked to perform a mission for which they are not trained or safely prepared.
Crucial Asset to Our Sister Services

Despite these challenges, our JET and IA Airmen continued to prove their superior
capability and demonstrate the highest levels of flexibility as they contributed to the joint
fighting team. During my many trips throughout the battlefield, I attempted to make contact
with as many Airmen as possible. I was continually impressed with the capabilities of all
of our JET and IA Airmen. The feedback I received from each of the TACONs was always
positive. The most crucial consideration is that our Airmen were integral to supporting the
joint force. A news article released by the Department of Defense notes that:
joint expeditionary tasked airmen have two commanders: an Army
commander responsible for their day-to-day missions, and an Air Force
commander responsible for their administrative and operational control.
And both sing the praises of their Airmen.
Army Lt. Col. Matt Smith, the [former] task force commander . . . [at Forward
Operating Base Lightning in Afghanistan], said airmen are crucial in ensuring
that the joint and combined services achieve their missions.

“Airmen help fill a critical function in our headquarters and are doing an
exceptional job—every one of them,” he said. “One of my greatest fears is
if the Air Force leaves us here; our operations run like a charm because of
our Airmen.”
The wing commander responsible for all JET airmen in Afghanistan said
airmen supporting the joint fight are examples of the Air Force’s “all in”
approach to the conflict.
“Mentoring and partnering with the Army, Navy and Afghan forces are crucial
to this war effort,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Steven L. Kwast, [former] 455th
Air Expeditionary Wing commander. “Every airman has to be all in; you’ll be
more focused on the mission, and you’ll ultimately be a better airman and
person. Airmen will do anything [the joint community asks] of us, as long as
we’re trained to do the job correctly.”
Airmen in the Fight

These Airmen include MSgt Rebekah Virtue, an aerospace medical service technician
assigned to a JET tasking with the 157th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion,
Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. As a convoy medic, Master Sergeant Virtue was appointed
by the brigade commander to serve as the senior medic over all battalion medics after
her leadership abilities and medical skills were highlighted by the battalion command
sergeant major. Due to an absence of Army senior enlisted personnel, Master Sergeant
Virtue was asked to take on the senior medic role, overseeing 18 combat medics. Her
team aided in 175 convoys, expedited 45 aeromedical evacuations, and saw to the
needs of 4,248 military members and civilians as well as 159 local nationals. During her
deployment, Master Sergeant Virtue and her team provided medical escort coverage
for 20,000 miles of outside-the-wire convoy movements and responded to 76 attacks by
vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, half of which resulted in multiple casualties.
Master Sergeant Virtue exemplified all of the Air Force core values as a JET Airman,
especially “service before self” and “excellence in all we do.”
Our Airmen also led provincial reconstruction teams (PRT), which supported reconstruction
efforts and empowered local governments to govern their constituents more effectively.
One such team in the region of Paktya, Afghanistan, was the US military’s first PRT.
Team members not only assisted, advised, and mentored their provincial partners but
also conducted counterinsurgency operations. This effectively culminated more than 10
years of PRT operations in Paktya, resulting in the administration of nearly $60 million
in Commanders’ Emergency Response Program funds, the construction of 38 health
facilities, and an increase in schools from 24 to 518 and in agricultural projects from fewer
than 10 during Taliban rule to over 68 province-wide today. The Paktya area is now home
to an estimated 1.2 million residents, up from fewer than 400,000 under Taliban rule.
Afghans the world over have returned home seeking a better life for their children and
are credited not only with enduring hostile contact with insurgents but also with proudly
completing the development of Afghanistan’s first self-sufficient province.
248
The 466 AEG maintained accountability of all JETs/IAs in this area 24 hours a day, seven
days a week. Deliberate efforts by the group to implement the ABLP made our Battlefield
Airmen active sensors who relayed critical contact events back to the group—and thus
the Air Force—without prompting and in real time. When one of our combat medics was
critically wounded and being prepared for theater medevac without any notice to Air Force
leadership, a JET Airman called the group to advise of the situation. As a result, the group
was accountable for the Airman to Headquarters 9 AETF-A hour-by-hour with complete
status and location as the medevac occurred. Furthermore, they simultaneously certified
that both the Air Force Combat Action Medal and Purple Heart were awarded to our hero
before leaving for the regional medical center in Germany.
From being entrusted to leading joint and coalition forces and securing hundreds of
millions of dollars of equipment, US Air Force JET/IA Airmen—the most invaluable and
dynamic aspect of airpower—provided the equivalent of a large combat air wing across
the entire country of Afghanistan. These Airmen remain a critical manpower component
for the future of the Resolute Support mission, just as they have during Operations
Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New Dawn. They are an enduring feature of Air
Force support to the joint force worldwide. Challenges remain to ensure the highest level
of support to these nonstandard forces, especially as the operations tempo begins to
decrease. It is important to continue identifying and understanding the lessons learned
from this significant service effort and adapt the Airman Blue Line Program as needed.
However, I feel certain that the outstanding individual contribution of these Airmen to the
joint force around the globe will continue without fail.
______________________________
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Public Affairs, Nov. 18, 2006.
64. Maj. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, commander, Combined Joint Task Force-76, and
commanding general, 10th Mountain Division, DOD press briefing, Jan. 26, 2007.
65. Author interview, Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, CFACC, Jan. 9, 2009.
66. “ISAF and Afghan Forces Launch Major Operation in the South,” ISAF release, March
6, 2007.
67. “March 30 Airpower: B-1B Protects Coalition Convoy,” Air Force News, March 30,
2007.
68. Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Writers Group, April 17,
2007.
69. Lt. Col. Michael Downs, “Rethinking the Combined Force Commander’s Intelligence-
Surveillance-Reconnaissance Approach to Counterinsurgency,” Air and Space Power
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70. MSgt. Dave Howard, tactical air control party (TACP) modernization lead at Electronic
Systems Center, “ESC Unit Making Digital Air Support Possible,” Chuck Paone, 66th
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71. Author interview, MSgt. Thomas Gorski, joint terminal attack controller (JTAC)
instructor, Nellis AFB, Nev., Oct. 11, 2008.
72. Author interview, Lt. Col. Red Walker, director of operations, 6th Combat Training
Squadron, Nellis AFB, Nev., Oct. 11, 2008.
73. “Afghans Say NATO Bombs Kill 25 Civilians,” Barry Bearak and Tamoor Shah, New
York Times, June 22, 2007.
74. “Seven Children Die as U.S.-led Air Strike Hits Afghan School,” Chiade O’Shea and
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, June 19, 2007.
75. Bearak and Shah, New York Times, June 22, 2007.
76. Brig. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, deputy commanding general for operations of Combined
Joint Task Force 82, DOD press briefing, June 26, 2007.
77. Author interview, Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, CFACC, Jan. 9, 2009.
“Bagram C-130s Drop High-tech Cargo Delivery System,” Maj. David Kurle, 455th Air
Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs, Sept. 1, 2006.
78. “C-17 Employs Screamer in Combat Airdrop,” Air Mobility Command Public Affairs,
May 25, 2007.
79. 2008 Army Posture Statement Information Papers, “Joint Precision Airdrop Systems.”
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commanding general, 101st Airborne Division, DOD press briefing, June 24, 2008.
81. “Predators on Patrol in Afghanistan,” SSgt. Rachel Martinez, 455th Air Expeditionary
Wing Public Affairs, Dec. 22, 2008.
82. “Airmen in Sky Give Warriors on Ground Situational Awareness,” SrA. Clinton Atkins,
379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs, Jan. 12, 2009.
83. Maj. Gen. Michael Tucker, deputy chief of staff for operations, ISAF, and deputy
commander for operations, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, DOD press briefing, Dec. 5,
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252
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85. “Afghanistan: Karzai Defends Taliban Peace Move,” CNN.com, Nov. 26, 2008.
86. Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. Institute of Peace panel “The Way Forward in
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95. Nelson, Valerie J. “Jeanne M. Holm Dies at 88; First Female Air Force General.” Los
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96. Schudel, Matt. “General Advanced Role of Women in the Military.” Washington Post
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101. “NATO and Afghanistan,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 18 June 2013, http://
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nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_101215.htm.

102. “CSAF: Joint Expeditionary Tasking Term,” Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, 17
December 2008, http://www.jber.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123128629.
103. Gen Gary North, commander, US Air Forces Central Command, to Gen David D.
McKiernan, commanding general, US Forces–Afghanistan, memorandum, 31 May
2009.
104. Richard Leech, USAFCENT A1 chief, Manpower and Personnel Readiness
Division, “Airman Blue Line Program Concept of Operations,” draft (Shaw AFB, SC:
Headquarters USAFCENT, n.d.), 3.
105. Ibid.
106. Capt David Faggard, USAF, “Airmen Demonstrate Importance to Afghanistan,”
US Department of Defense, 9 September 2009, http://www.defense.gov/News/
NewsArticle.aspx?ID=55769.
107. Col Panos Bakogiannis, USAF, e-mail correspondence, 20 October 2013—23
January 2014.
108. See Nima Abbaszadeh et al., Provincial Reconstruction Teams: Lessons and
Recommendations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs, January 2008), http://www.civilaffairsassoc.org/pdf/
provincial_reconstruction_teams-lessons_and_recommendations.pdf.
109. Bakogiannis, e-mail, 2013–14. 10. Ibid., 2014.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed or implied in the Journal are those of the
authors and should not be construed as carrying the official sanction of the
Department of Defense, Air Force, Air Education and Training Command,
Air University, or other agencies or departments of the US government.
This article may be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. If it
is reproduced, the Air and Space Power Journal requests a courtesy line.
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AIR AND SPACE STUDIES 200

The Evolution of USAF Air and Space Power

Jeanne M. Holm Center for Officer Accessions and Citizen Development

with articles by:

Leadership Studies (LS), Profession of Arms (PA), Communication Studies (CS),

LESSON TITLE PAGE

Lesson 1 Introduction to AS200 4

Cognitive Lesson Objective:

Cognitive Samples of Behavior:

Affective Lesson Objective:

Affective Sample of Behavior:

Airpower through WWI 7

Airpower through WWI 9

But the gunner rings the bell

When we go to bomb the columns

On the road to Aix-la-Pelle!

Airpower through WWI 11

ST. MIHIEL AND AN AERIAL ARMADA

Airpower through WWI 13

Airpower through WWI 15

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS—

WILBUR (1867-1912) AND ORVILLE (1871-1948)

Airpower through WWI 17

COLONEL EDGAR S. GORRELL (1891-1945)

• Pursued Gen Francisco “Pancho” Villa(Mexican Expedition)

Airpower through WWI 19

CAPTAIN EDDIE RICKENBACKER

On Nov. 6, 1930, President Herbert Hoover awarded the Medal of Honor to

Airpower through WWI 21

Airpower through WWI 23

SIR HUGH MONTAGUE TRENCHARD

• Commissioner of the London metropolitan police from 1931 to 1935.

Cognitive Lesson Objective:

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 25

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 27

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 29

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 31

THE BILLY MITCHELL COURT-MARTIAL

By John T. Correll . Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Rocket From San Antonio

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 33

Gullion Evens the Odds

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 35

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 37

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 39

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 41

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 43

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 45

The Pacific war cost the United States over 13,000

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 47

DAYLIGHT PRECISION BOMBING

By John T. Correll . Reprinted by permission from Air Force

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 49

The Turning Point

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 51

Jet Stream Boosts

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 53

The Mystique of the Norden Bombsight

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 55

THE DOOLITTLE RAID ON TOKYO

(18 APRIL 1942)

Airpower: End of WWI through WWII 57

PLOESTI RAID (AUGUST 1943)

SCHWEINFURT RAIDS (1943)