Following the cataclysmic losses suffered in World War I, air power
theorists in Europe advocated for long-range bombers to overfly the
trenches and strike deep into the enemy's heartland. The bombing of
cities was seen as a means to collapse the enemy's will to resist and
bring the war to a quick end. In the United States, airmen called for an
independent air force, but with the nation's return to isolationism,
there was little appetite for an offensive air power doctrine. By the
1930s, however, a cadre of officers at the US Army Air Corps Tactical
School (ACTS) had articulated an operational concept of high-altitude
daylight precision bombing (HADPB) that would be the foundation for a
uniquely American vision of strategic air attack.
In Lectures of the Air Corps Tactical School and American Strategic
Bombing in World War II editor Phil Haun brings together nine ACTS
lecture transcripts, which have been preserved in Air Force archives,
exactly as delivered to the airmen destined to lead the US Army Air
Forces in World War II. Presented is a distinctive American strategy of
high-altitude daylight precision bombing as told through lectures given
at the ACTS during the interwar period and how these airmen put the
theory to the test. The book examines the Air Corps theory of HADPB as
compared to the reality of combat in World War II by relying on recent,
revisionist histories that have given scholars a deeper understanding of
the impact of strategic bombing on Germany.
