Architects of Air Power

Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1981. First Printing [Stated]. Leatherette. 176 pages. Color front endpaper. Memo to the Reader laid in. Illustrations (some with color). Bibliography. Index. Decorative front cover. This is one of The Epic of Flight series. General Billy Mitchell and Reich Marshal Hermann Goring are among the aviators discussed in a study of the growth of air power in the years between World War I and World War II. David Nevin joined the Navy as a teenager and served in the Pacific. After the war he was hired as a police reporter for The Brownsville Herald. That led to work for Time and Life magazines. He would later write 12 history books for Time-Life Books. The consultant was Dr. Eugene M. Emme, a noted authority, author, professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and historian with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Eugene Morlock Emme (3 November 1919 – 24 June 1985) was an American air force pilot during World War II (1939–1945) who became a pioneering historian of aviation, and then the first historian of NASA's aerospace program. Before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor he was a CPT pilot. After the United States joined the war he became a naval aviator. He served in the Pacific theater.[2] In 1948 he transferred to the United States Air Force Reserve. In 1949 Emme received his Ph.D. in Modern European History from the University of Iowa.[1] He became a member of the civilian faculty of the Air University (United States Air Force) in 1949. He was a pioneer in oral history, and interviewed Lord Dowding of the British Royal Air Force, Field Marshal Erhard Milch at Landsberg Prison in 1952, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Architects of Air Power is a Time-Life aviation book included in the Epic of Flight series. By the late 1930s air power had dramatically altered the strategic balance in Europe. The seeds of this new order had been sown in WWI. A few farsighted men – notably British Chief of Air Staff Hugh Trenchard, “Billy” Mitchell of the U.S. Army’s Air Service and Italian Army colonel Giulio Douhet – insisted that an air force could undertake independent offensive action in war. The flying machines of their day were primitive and could carry only a handful of bombs but these architects of air power foresaw that in an era of total warfare, civilians as well a soldiers would become targets of aerial attacks aimed at crushing their will to resist. Condition: Very good / No dust jacket issued.

Keywords: Hugh Trenchard, Billy Mitchell, Giulio Douhet, Herman Goering, Air Power, Aircraft, Heinkel, Junkers, William Mitchell, Strategic Bombing

ISBN: 080943279X

[Book #85178]

Price: $37.50

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