British Imperial Air Power examines the air defense of Australia and New Zealand during the interwar period. It also demonstrates the difficulty of applying new military aviation technology to the ...defense of the global Empire and provides insight into the nature of the political relationship between the Pacific Dominions and Britain. Following World War I, both Dominions sought greater independence in defense and foreign policy. Public aversion to military matters and the economic dislocation resulting from the war and later the Depression left little money that could be provided for their respective air forces. As a result, the Empire’s air services spent the entire interwar period attempting to create a strategy in the face of these handicaps. In order to survive, the British Empire’s military air forces offered themselves as a practical and economical third option in the defense of Britain’s global Empire, intending to replace the Royal Navy and British Army as the traditional pillars of imperial defense.
Between 1939 and 1945, the British public was spellbound by the martial endeavours and dashing style of the young men of the RAF, especially those with silvery fabric wings sewn above the breast ...pocket of their glamorous slate-blue uniform. The author provides the first scholarly study of the place of ‘the flyer’ in British culture during the Second World War. Examining the lives of RAF personnel, and their popular representation in literary and cinematic texts, he illuminates broader issues of gender, social class, national and racial identities, emotional life, and the creation of a national myth in twentieth-century Britain. In particular, he argues that the flyer's relationship to fear, aggression, loss of his comrades, bodily dismemberment, and psychological breakdown reveals broader ambiguities surrounding the dominant understandings of masculinity in the middle decades of the century. Despite his star appeal, cultural representations of the flyer encompassed both the gentle, chivalrous warrior and the uncompromising agent of destruction. Paying particular attention to the romantic universe of wartime aircrew, Francis reveals the extraordinary contrasts of their daily lives: dicing with death in the sky one moment, before sitting down to lunch with wives and children in the next. Male and female experiences during the war were not polarized and antithetical, but were complementary and interrelated, a conclusion which has implications for the history of gender in modern Britain that reach well beyond either the specialized military culture of the wartime RAF or the chronological parameters of the Second World War.
Mere months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a volunteer group of American airmen to the Far East, convinced that supporting Chinese resistance against the ...continuing Japanese invasion would be crucial to an eventual Allied victory in World War II. Within two weeks of that fateful Sunday in December 1941, the American Volunteer Group—soon to become known as the legendary "Flying Tigers"—went into action. For three and a half years, the volunteers and the Army Air Force airmen who followed them fought in dangerous aerial duels over East Asia. Audaciously led by master tactician Claire Lee Chennault, daring pilots such as David Lee "Tex" Hill and George B. "Mac" McMillan led their men in desperate combat against enemy air forces and armies despite being outnumbered and outgunned. Aviators who fell in combat and survived the crash or bailout faced the terrifying reality of being lost and injured in unfamiliar territory. Historian Daniel Jackson, himself a combat-tested pilot, recounts the stories of downed aviators who attempted to evade capture by the Japanese in their bid to return to Allied territory. He reveals the heroism of these airmen was equaled, and often exceeded, by the Chinese soldiers and civilians who risked their lives to return them safely to American bases. Based on thorough archival research and filled with compelling personal narratives from memoirs, wartime diaries, and dozens of interviews with veterans, this vital work offers an important new perspective on the Flying Tigers and the history of World War II in China.
Friendly fire Snook, Scott A; Snook, Scott A
2011., 20110919, 2011, 2000-01-01
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On April 14, 1994, two U.S. Air Force F-15 fighters accidentally shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopters over Northern Iraq, killing all twenty-six peacekeepers onboard. In response to this ...disaster the complete array of military and civilian investigative and judicial procedures ran their course. After almost two years of investigation with virtually unlimited resources, no culprit emerged, no bad guy showed himself, no smoking gun was found. This book attempts to make sense of this tragedy--a tragedy that on its surface makes no sense at all.
Aircraft were at the heart of British supply diplomacy with the United States in the Second World War and were at the forefront of the Roosevelt administration's policy of aiding the Anglo-French ...alliance against Germany. They were the largest item in British purchasing in the US in 1940, a key consideration in the Lend-Lease of 1941 and a major component of several wartime conferences between Churchill and Roosevelt. Through a series of case studies, Gavin J. Bailey reveals new details of how Britain used American aircraft and integrates this with broader British statecraft and strategy. He challenges conceptions that Britain was strategically reliant on the US and reveals a complicated, asymmetrical interdependency between the wartime allies.
From 2002 to 2003, F-16s of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, the Royal Norwegian Air Force and the Royal Danish Air Force flew side by side in the hostile skies over Afghanistan. United under the ...wings of the European Participating Air Forces (EPAF), a unique, trinational alliance, they represented their countries' flying contribution to the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Each country deployed six F-16 fighter-bombers, together forming one squadron-sized detachment. In theory at least, the EPAF enabled the smaller European air forces to make a proportionally greater contribution to OEF than they could have done individually. By joining forces, the participating air forces made optimal use of their limited resources - a typical small powers strategy enacted by the three countries to overcome the structural limitations of their military capabilities in a long-standing allied arrangement. This article is a comparative study of the experiences gained concerning the cooperation between the three air forces and the interoperability of the EPAF detachment within the larger OEF coalition; its conclusion is that, although working within the trinational framework revealed differences on the political, military-operational, tactical-technical and personnel level, most of these problems were eventually overcome. All things considered, the EPAF did offer these smaller countries an instrument to demonstrate their solidarity with the United States and provide a significant contribution to the Global War on Terror, making it a prime "operational" example of effective small or middle power strategy to mitigate (combat) limitations in an asymmetrical multinational relationship vis-à-vis the United States. Keywords: Royal Netherlands Air Force, Royal Norwegian Air Force, Royal Danish Air Force, European Participating Air Forces, Enduring Freedom, coalition warfare
The Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) currently runs three in-theater hospitals for severely injured or wounded personnel. Part of the practioners' preparation was treating DoD beneficiaries for a ...broad range of injuries and illnesses. Opportunities for this preparation are not as numerous "in house" as they once were, and AFMS does not always get proper credit for those gained elsewhere. Proper credit for that work is important for funding.
An interview with Kenneth W. Allen and Cristina L. Garafola, authors of the book 70 Years of the PLA Air Force, is presented. Among other things, they talk about the misunderstandings or ...misperceptions about the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) outside of China, the most important differences in terms of command structure and organization between the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) and its Western counterparts, in particular the US, and how the reform under Xi Jinping affected the PLAAF, particularly the adoption of the Theater Command model.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
European Air Powerexamines the current state of eight separate European air forces and their prospective air power capabilities in a manner that will appeal to a wide audience of air force ...enthusiasts. Included are perspectives from independent air power experts reviewing the air forces of France, Germany, Turkey, and Great Britain as well as from the leaders of the air forces of the Nordic nations, including Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
Within the national security framework of threats and challenges, and against the seemingly universal backdrop of lower budgets for defense, the contributors present varying views on the types of air power capability a state should have and those it does not need. The contributors consider each air force separately and how each is structured to remain sustainable and efficient in accordance with its national strategic infrastructure.
This report is one of a series designed to support Air Force leaders in promoting resilience among its Airmen, civilian employees, and Air Force families. It examines the relationship between medical ...fitness and resilience, using key constructs found in the scientific literature, which address preventive care, the presence and management of injuries and chronic conditions, and facilitators and barriers to access of appropriate health care.
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