The False Death of Airpower

摘要

In October 1957, five years before he wrote Seven Days in May, Fletcher Knebel was with Look magazine when he penned an influential feature, "Coming Death of the Flying Air Force." It detailed how guided missiles were on the brink of making manned combat aircraft obsolete."It can be heard in the corridors of the Pentagon, in our bases flung around the world, in statements of the brass and in the design rooms of industry: The flying Air Force is being grounded by the missile," Knebel wrote just a decade into USAF's official existence.It was an early take on a notion that regularly resurfaces. One finds a similar theme in military historian Martin van Creveld's new book, The Age of Airpower. Van Creveld does a creditable job surveying the broad and complex history of airpower in military operations, but goes off the rails during his frequent switches from historian to commentator.Airpower reached its peak in World War II, van Creveld argues, and "fierce debate soon developed as to who had done what, how effective the attacks had really been, and what the overall contribution of airpower to the unfolding of operations was."