Aviation History - July 2016

60 AH july 2016

REVIEWS

John Andreas Olsen, a

colonel in the Norwegian

military, has made a name

for himself as the author

and editor of a growing list

of learned books about air

power. He has drawn on top

practitioners and academi-

cians as contributors for this

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essays on the concepts of

two former U.S. Air Force

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Boyd and the quixotic John

Warden. One of the essays is

ring model is used to identify

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is to be smart about target

selection because war’s pur-

AIRPOWER REBORN

The Strategic Concepts of John Warden

and John Boyd

edited by John Andreas Olsen, Naval Institute Press, 2015, $49.95.

I grew up hearing stories about the air war

in China. During World War II, my father

was an aircraft electrical systems mechanic

in Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault’s

Fourteenth Air Force. My father knew

and worked on the aircraft of many of the

legendary pilots of that theater, including

Colonel Robert L. Scott during his second

tour of duty in China in 1944-45.

I was probably 12 or 13 in the late 1950s

when I read God Is My Co-PilotNWZ\PMÅZ[\

time. I re-read it for the umpteenth time

about two months ago. It was one of the

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it remains to this day one of the greatest.

First published in 1943, it stayed in print

well into the late 1960s.

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aircraft, plus a number of probables. He was one of America’s

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pilot, he was told in early 1942 that at age 33 he was too old

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American Volunteer Group, popularly known as the Flying

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AVG members, learning about their tac-

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absorbed into the U.S. Army Air Forces,

although only a few of the AVG members

chose to remain in China thereafter. On

the recommendation of Chennault and

China’s president, Chiang Kai-shek, Scott

was assigned to command the newly des-

ignated 23rd Fighter Group, composed

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pull together from within the CBI theater.

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and assigned to command the China

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Fourteenth Air Force.

It was a poor man’s war in China, and

Scott tells the story of how Chennault’s

men continually had to beg, borrow

and sometimes steal the necessary fuel, tires, ammunition

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Cannibalization became the order of the day, with any unre-

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superior numbers of enemy kills against the small number of

friendly losses.

God Is My Co-Pilot was and still is a great book, though

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made him cringe.

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about America’s air war in China. God Is My Co-Pilot and

Chennault’s own Way of a Fighter remain two of the essentials.

David T. Zabecki

written by Warden himself,

reprising and expanding

upon his seminal 1986 thesis,

which mapped out a theo-

retical air campaign based

on the idea that an enemy

can be defeated by bombing

command-and-control nodes

without the need to go head-

to-head with massed forces.

Warden, whose thesis pro-

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successful Desert Storm air

campaign in 1991, writes that

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pose is not simple destruction

but attainment of end-game

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chapter praises Boyd for

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direct-act) loop, a shorthand

description of the decision

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enced military thinking by

arguing that wars can be won

if military leaders get inside

the loop and outpace their

opponent’s decision-making.

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serious students of air power

theory and grand strategy.

Philip Handleman

CLASSICS

GOD IS MY CO-PILOT

by Col. Robert L. Scott, 1943.