Billy Mitchell’s impact on America military aviation development is unquestionably profound but his progressive radical approach in convincing others about the significance of air power led other to articulate, “Mitchell had allowed his vision of the potential of aviation to cost him his perspective.” Believing in his results from combat in WWI Mitchell set out to prove the importance of the air domain challenging the establishment on the significance of air power. Mitchell started out with a balanced approach regarding of this “new instrument of warfare” but as time progressed he and his pupils in the Air Service departed from a vision of a balanced force to one concentrated solely on strategic bombing leading up to WWII. Billy Mitchell’s leadership, antics and influence affected how and the way this happened resulting in profound impacts on a service that ended up focusing on strategic bombing while having to learn air operations in support of ground forces in combat.
Mitchell stated, “future military operations could not proceed….without command of the air” and history has proven him correct. His relentless effort, which turned more radical over time, cost the Air Service in planes and lives as it could not deliver the decisive victory it promised. The gap between technology and the desired effects led to set backs until tactics and technology meet at an axis point where air dominance contributed to a team victory in WWII. Mitchell and his understudies should have realized that one airplane, such as the “Flying Fortress”, could not conduct all the missions required, protect its self from enemy fighters and win the war. They should have seen this coming as the founders of flight “knew that large airplanes built with...
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...tions between the Army and Air Service. As a result, Air Service generals had to focus on relationship-building skills in order to achieve a team victory both in Europe and Pacific theaters and core tasks had to develop in combat. The development of American air power bears the hallmark of Mitchell’s influence both positive and negative. Finding the right balance in today’s environment will be a testament to Mitchell’s original vision of a balanced Air Force ensuring America’s security.
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In today’s world, the use of airplanes in wars or in everyday life has become a part of how we live as human beings. Removing the air forces of the world is like taking a step back in time when wars were only fought on land or sea. WWI began only eleven short years after the Wright brothers achieved powered flight in 19031 and yet aircrafts were being used for surveillance and eventually combat purposes. It is understood that these aircrafts were primitive, but they laid down the foundation for what we know today as fighter jets. The Fokker Eindecker “revolutionized air combat by successfully employing a synchronized forward -firing machine gun mounted on the engine cowling”2. Because this airplane became the first to successfully use a synchronized machine gun, it allowed its pilots to become the first aerial combat tactitions3.
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The British were outnumbered 900 fighters to 640 fighters plus the Germans had an additional 1,300 bombers. With these statistics, the Luftwaffe thought that they would have a very easy time defeating the Royal Air Force. Even though the British were outnumbered, they had a few advantages that the Luftwaffe was unaware of. First, they develope...
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The United States Army has been through many changes since its start in 1775, yet it remains the greatest, most disciplined all volunteer fighting force in the world. Like the service members of the past and present, many Army units have contributed to the success of our military, and like those service members many have been lost. Even though these units are not as well known as the divisions they have belonged to, they have enriched the history of our Army just the same. The achievements of the 123rd Aviation Battalion have contributed to the history and success of our nations battles.
“The vapors suck you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity. In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true.” (Pg.88)
In the summer of 1940, World War II had been in progress for nearly a year. Adolf Hitler was victorious and planning an invasion of England to seal Europe’s fate. Everyone in the United States of America knew it. The Germans were too powerful. Hitler's Luftwaffe had too many planes, too many pilots and too many bombs and since Hitler was Europe's problem, the United States claimed to be a neutral country (Neutrality Act of 1939). Seven Americans, however, did not remain neutral and that’s what this book is about. They joined Britain's Royal Air Force to help save Britain in its darkest hour to fight off the skilled pilots of Germany's Luftwaffe in the blue skies over England, the English Channel, and North Europe. By October 1940, they had helped England succeed in one of the greatest air battles in the history of aviation, the Battle of Britain. This book helps to show the impact of the few Americans who joined the Battle of Britain to fight off an evil that the United States didn’t acknowledge at the time. The name of Kershaw’s book was inspired from the quote, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to sow few,” which was said by British Officer and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
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