Air Power History
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Recent papers in Air Power History
PDA Briefing Memo #30, 26 September 2003. Examines how air power helped bring about the rapid collapse of the Iraqi Republican Guard and regular army in the 2003 war. The memo focuses specifically on the role of battlefield air... more
Air power is a big topic and this is a big book. The Routledge Handbook of Air Power features some thirty well-researched, cutting-edge essays written by highly-regarded experts in their particular specialist areas within the broader air... more
Reviews "Reach for the Sky" by Paul Brickhill (Ballantine edition, 1967), a biography of the Royal Air Force ace Douglas Bader. Bader had lost his legs in an aircraft crash in 1927, but he succeeded in returning to flight status. He led... more
(graduate; senior level undergraduate): Seminar course to include key strategic thinkers and how their theories apply to the study of war, both in history and by modern practitioners. Students read works by Vegetius, Machiavelli,... more
Chapter prepared for Making Things International II: Catalysts and Reactions. Mark B. Salter, ed. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press (2015)
An examination of developments over the past year regarding airborne electronic warfare at the operational level, and regarding technological and procurement developments
I gave this presentation on 13 November, 2014 at the Point of Remembrance in Hódmezővásárhely, Hungary. The one-day conference under the title “Air War over Hungary in World War II” was organized by the Point of Remembrance (Emlékpont).... more
Birds and aircraft have a fundamental problem: their range and endurance are limited. To remain aloft requires the expenditure of energy. Eventually, birds must land and rest, and aircraft must refuel. The invention of nuclear power in... more
Os desafios de natureza estratégica induziram alterações no pensamento militar. As necessidades de defesa estática diminuíram, surgindo a urgência de potenciar a capacidade de projecção de forças, tornando-as expedicionárias, modulares e... more
This is the life of an extraordinary Messerschmitt Bf 109 G test pilot of the MGW Győr, Hungary. Ottó Lukács was an extraordinary person, because he flew the first Bf 109 combat sortie of the Royal Hungarian Air Force on 15 October, 1942... more
Can air power coerce and to what degree? The paper analyses the historical usage and arrives at some recommendations
This is an excerpt from the Messerschmitt Bf 109 G equipped Hungarian 102nd Figher Squadron's Combat Diary over the Eastern Front with many formerly unknown details about their activity, victories, losses and aircraft. It was published in... more
This presentation covers the F-35 Lightning, examining its capabilities and strategic usages in addition to implications the hardware will have on power dynamics in international system.
In late 1912 and early 1913, people all over Britain reported seeing airships in the night sky, yet there were none. It was widely assumed that these 'phantom airships' were German Zeppelins, testing British defenses in preparation for... more
The employment of airpower in CIO has remained controversial because of the issue of collateral damage. The lethality of air delivered weapons makes it difficult to selectively destroy the insurgent enemy who is not averse to using human... more
Biography and obituary of László Dániel (1922-2020), who was the last living Hungarian fighter ace of the Second World War. It was published in the 2020-2021 issue of the Magyar Repüléstörténeti Társaság Évkönyve (Yearbook of the... more
An examination of the United States Air Force's B-21 strategic bomber programme.
First issue of a new peer-reviewed military history journal.
Seventy-five years after the Battle of Britain, the conventional wisdom remains that the Battle was won by the innovation of the ‘Dowding system’, which integrated radar and eight-gun fighters, and the skill and courage of the RAF's... more
Biography and obituary of Endre Frankó (1923-2020), who was the last living Hungarian fighter pilot of the Second World War who flew combat sorties (he passed way a month after László Dániel, the last living fighter ace). It was published... more
Archaeological summary of the First World War at Sea
The ever-expanding Lawrence literature overlooks the link between his concept of warfare and subsequent choice of the RAF for enlistment. Lawrence's fame stemmed from the cultural difference between Romantic heroism in the desert and the... more
"This article seeks to add to the post-Cold War character of conflict debate by putting air power, its attractiveness to liberal democracies and the subsequent British way of war, in both conventional war and counter-insurgency, into... more
"The failure of Operation Jubilee, the raid on Dieppe, has partially been attributed to the failure of the RAF to provide the bomber support needed to support the landings. This fallacious argument, based on hindsight and a lack of... more
Usually mischaracterised by hostile Soviet historiography as "peasants with pitchforks," the multi-partisan revolutionary Makhnovist movement in the Ukraine over 1917-1921 at its height was a technologically-competent conventional army... more
During the First World War, several writers began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was the possibility of a sudden, intense aerial bombardment of its cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and large numbers of... more
About the Russian PAK FA 5th generation fighter aircraft.
Even before Operation Barbarossa petered out in December 1941, Germany's oil reserves were severely depleted. Adolf Hitler worried that his armed forces would soon grind to a halt for want of petroleum products. During the last months of... more
Read my review of Ghost Fleet in the latest edition of Air Power Review.
Politics and Military Advice: Lessons from the Campaign in Greece 1941 takes a fascinating, in-depth look at how the British intervention in Greece during the early part of the Second World War was a political imperative that was not... more
While many are familiar with the Normandy Invasion, few American, Canadian or British citizens know about the massive air campaign waged against their occupied ally. This offensive lasted four long years and targeted most of France’s... more
The Allied failure to close the mid-Atlantic " air gap " before May 1943 is widely attributed to the prioritization of the strategic bombing campaign against Germany over the allocation of long range aircraft to trade defense. This... more
This paper will suggest that once air superiority was established by US forces in 1950 over the Korean Peninsula it was key in allowing the US to conduct air operations. However once outside help flowed in North Korea it became harder for... more
This article discusses three aspects of air power in South Africa during the period between the two world wars, each one intermeshing with debates about what kind of political and social space the Union could claim for itself beyond its... more