Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945

The title explains the book. It is intended as a detailed investigation of the evolution of both British and American ideas on strategic bombing in the first half of the twentieth century. It succeeds admirably. It is, in fact, an extremely thoughtful and perceptive analysis and one which any modern warrior struggling with buzz-words such as "transformational warfare", "network centric", or "Revolution in Military Affairs", could and should read with profit. All these jargon-laden phrases come down in the end to how the military marries new technologies and the opportunites they present, with the conceptual framework necessary to utilise them properly. This book is concerned with how US and British airmen addressed these conceptual difficulties following the inception of military air power in the First World War. The author shows very clearly how rhetoric too often exceeded reality, and how doctrine was too often allowed to degenerate into dogma. The causes are many and varied, and in the British case at least had nothing to do with Army control, since the RAF had been independent since 1 April 1918. The book makes clear the unwisdom of simply debating original and revolutionary concepts, whilst ignoring the need to develop essential training programmes and the equipment to support them. The RAF in the inter-war years could "talk the talk", but in 1939 it could not "walk the walk". Specifically it had neglected the primary art of navigation. The USAAF fared little better when its rhetoric was exposed to the fires of war. Both Air Forces eventually modified both their rhetoric and, as the author makes clear, once the neglected fundamentals were addressed, air power proved of decisive importance in winning the war. In part this story has been told before, but seldom with such impressive depth of research and scholarship. Anyone who believes they know the story of strategic air power would be well advised to read this book to discover how much they have missed. Biddle reveals, for example, the extent to which very early US official writings on strategtic air power drew, verbatim at times, on British documents provided to the Americans in the First World War. In sum this is an excellent book, combining elegant prose and thoughtful analysis with impressive research. It should be compulsory reading for Air Force officers and all those concerned with military procurement programmes.