Air Power: The Men, Machines, and Ideas That Revolutionized War, from Kitty Hawk to Gulf War II

An account of the airplane's revolutionary transformation of modern warfare. It tells of the inspirations, developments, controversies, successes, failures, and limitations of the airplane as the ultimate weapon of war.

Explores the innovations that propelled "air power" into the lexicon of warfare, from the first biplanes to drop ordinance to the high-tech wonders of missile-firing drone aircraft.

Within a decade of the Wright BrothersÂ' historic flight at Kitty Hawk, pilots were dropping the first crude bombs out of airplanes in combat while visionaries were predicting that the crushing power of an aerial assault would end warfare as we knew it.

Yet for much of the first century of flight the myth of the airplaneÂ's unstoppable power often surged far ahead of technological reality. It would take both brilliant new inventions and bold new thinking for air power to triumph at lastÂas it did with such devastating effect in the two Gulf wars.

This sweeping history includes the latest inside details of air operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where precision weapons and unmanned drones quickly determined the outcome of the fight against the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Stephen Budiansky draws on combat memoirs, government archives, and museum collections to create a sobering and dramatic account of the air wars of the last hundred years. A story of ideas and men, of intricate machines and fierce passions, Air Power is an edge-of-the-seat drama of contemporary warfare and technology crafted by one of our most gifted writers.

The author of Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II explores the innovations that propelled "air power" into the lexicon of warfare, from the first biplanes to drop ordinance to the high-tech wonders of missile-firing drone aircraft.

General

ISBN		9780670032853
Fiction/Non-Fiction		Non-Fiction
Publisher		Viking Pr
List Price		$29.95
Author		Budiansky, Stephen
Publication Date		04/01/2004
Release Status		Out of Print
Format		Hardcover
Language		English
Measurements		Height: 9.75 Inches (US) Width: 6.5 Inches (US) Thickness: 1.75 Inches (US) Unit Weight: 2.05 Pounds (US)