Mark Clodfelter

On the whole, I think that I would have been more impressed with this monograph a few years ago, as many of the issues that Clodfelter invokes are already part of my perspective. That said, he does do a fine job of illustrating how the organizational culture that still largely informs the United States Air Force came about; between the reaction to the horrors of the Great War, and the sense that there had to be a more efficient way to wage war, which reflected the values of the "Progressive" show more movement of the first two decades of the 20th century in the United States. That this supposed "progressive" way of war looks like the same old attritional grind and terror is a commentary on the nature of real war. show less

Air power has been the most potent weapon of destruction in modern warfare and yet its effectiveness is neither uniform nor assured. The author analyzes the strategic bombing campaigns of the Vietnam era and reveals the serious pitfalls in the reliance on air powers as a primary instrument in a limited war. Proving that air power, no matter how vast, may not be effective, he establishes the critical importance of matching bombing objectives to national policy goals in war.