The Influence of Air Power Upon History - Walter J. Boyne

I reread Boyne's Clash of Wings last fall. That was focused on World War 2. This book, with a title based off Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, covers the entirety of the use of air power in military or, in the case of the Berlin Airlift, diplomatic situations in human history*, up to the early 21st Century.

Although he notes it's too early to really assess whether air power is going to have any influence on history in the struggles with terrorist groups, given that they aren't confined to one border. Also, it's more difficult to try and cut off communication between leaders and soldiers, so to speak, and it may not do any good anyway. A suicide bomber can still just go out in the street and blow himself up, whether he gets word from his leader of not.

The book spends ~280 of the 400 pages just getting past World War 2, and much of that is on World War 2, or the run-up to it. Which makes sense, given the scale of the conflict, the effect air power was able to have (which was not always in line with what it had been predicted to have), and how its effects carried forward over the remainder of the century. Still, for me, it was treading a lot of familiar ground, even just from Clash of Wings. That most of the participating countries failed to understand the size of air force necessary to really achieve air superiority, the misconceived notion a country could be bombed into submission quickly and with minimal casualties on the attacking country's part, things like that.

Although Boyne mentioned that the heads of the Royal Air Force encouraged Chamberlain not to go to war over the Sudentland because they were worried about the Nazis bombing England before the RAF was able to defend it. Chamberlain was already disinclined to go to war to defend the Czechs, but that gave him another excuse. I hadn't read that anywhere I could recall.

I'm a little surprised that he didn't devote any time to the Soviets fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as a comparison with the United States' efforts in more recent years, if nothing else. Differences in approach, different limitations placed upon them by either technology or politics. Political directives come up a lot near the end of the book as Boyne discusses the Vietnam War. He strongly dislikes Robert McNamara.

The book has a certain implicit pro-military tint to it. Not a surprise, but I figured it was worth mentioning. There were sections evaluating whether they U.S. used its air power to proper effect, while I'm wondering whether the U.S. should even be involved at all. He does discuss times where one country didn't use their air power, either because the threat of it was enough, or the threat of their opposition's air power was enough to deter them. Especially if the U.S. is getting involved because they're confident their air force can do the job, whereas they might be more reluctant if they had less faith in it. In the chapter on World War 1, he talks about how, since air power's inception, people in charge have always overestimated the impact it can have for the amount of funding and support they provide. And the advocates encourage those delusions, because some support (which provides the chance to show what is possible and get more support) is better than none.

'It can be said of fighters that they are at once the least useful and most important of aircraft types. They are least useful in the sense that they (as a pure fighter) do not drop bombs nor gather information, and their dogfights, while colorful, do not gain anything for either side except the possibility of air superiority. And that one fact is the reason they are the most important type, for the obtaining of air superiority dictates the operation of other types of aircraft, including the bombers and reconnaissance types.'