America in the Air War

Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. First Printing [Stated]. Leatherette. Very good/No dust jacket issued. 176 pages. Color endpapers. Map. Illustrations (some with color). Bibliography. Index. Decorative front cover. This is one of The Epic of Flight series, edited by Jim Hicks. Traces United States aerial operations in World War II and recounts the training and combat experiences of pilots and flight crews. Edward Jablonski (March 1, 1922 - February 10, 2004) was the author of several biographies on American cultural personalities, such as George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Alan Jay Lerner, and Irving Berlin, as well as books on aviation history. He served in the United States Army Field Artillery in New Guinea during World War II. For his actions in New Guinea, he was awarded the Silver Star. After leaving the army, he attended college in Bay City as a pre-journalism major. He continued his studies at the New School for Social Research, receiving his bachelor's in 1950. He also completed postgraduate work in anthropology at Columbia. While working for the March of Dimes charity in New York, Jablonski wrote articles and music reviews for a number of small magazines as well as liner notes for albums; this was the beginning of a fifty-year freelance career. The editors of Time-Life Books have produced another exciting series: The Epic of Flight. Air warfare was a major component in all theaters of World War II and, together with anti-aircraft warfare, consumed a large fraction of the industrial output of the major powers. Germany and Japan depended on air forces that were closely integrated with land and naval forces; the Axis powers downplayed the advantage of fleets of strategic bombers and were late in appreciating the need to defend against Allied strategic bombing. By contrast, Britain and the United States took an approach that greatly emphasized strategic bombing and (to a lesser degree) tactical control of the battlefield by air as well as adequate air defenses. Both Britain and the U.S. built substantially larger strategic forces of large, long-range bombers. Simultaneously, they built tactical air forces that could win air superiority over the battlefields, thereby giving vital assistance to ground troops. The U.S. and Royal Navy also built a powerful naval-air component based on aircraft carriers, as did the Japanese; these played the central role in the war at sea. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor and during the period within which the predecessor U.S. Army Air Corps became the Army Air Forces in late June 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave command of the Navy to an aviator, Admiral Ernest King, with a mandate for an aviation-oriented war in the Pacific. FDR allowed King to build up land-based naval and Marine aviation, and seize control of the long-range bombers used in antisubmarine patrols in the Atlantic. American theatre commanders became air power enthusiasts and built their strategies around the need for tactical air supremacy. MacArthur had been badly defeated in the Philippines in 1941-42 primarily because the Japanese controlled the sky. His planes were outnumbered and outclassed, his airfields shot up, his radar destroyed, and his supply lines cut. His infantry never had a chance. MacArthur vowed never again. His island-hopping campaign was based on the strategy of isolating Japanese strongholds while leaping past them. Each leap was determined by the range of his 5th Air Force, and the first task on securing an objective was to build an airfield to prepare for the next leap. Eisenhower's deputy at SHAEF was Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, who had been commander of the Allied Mediterranean Air Command when Eisenhower was in charge of Allied operations in the Mediterranean. The Allies won battlefield air supremacy in the Pacific in 1943, and in Europe in 1944. That meant that Allied supplies and reinforcements would get through to the battlefront, but not the enemy's. It meant the Allies could concentrate their strike forces wherever they pleased, and overwhelm the enemy with a preponderance of firepower. There was a specific campaign, within the overall strategic offensive, for suppression of enemy air defenses, or, specifically, Luftwaffe fighters.