Striving for Air Superiority: The Tactical Air Command in Vietnam. . - Net Assessment - Brief Article - book review

Striving for Air Superiority: The Tactical Air Command in Vietnam by dint of Craig C. Hannah. Texas A&M University Pres (http://www.tamu.edu/upress),John H Lindsey Building, Lewis road 4354 TAMU, College Station, Texas 77843 2002 176 pages, $2995

This work is both enlightening and disappointing. Beginning with the former, Hannah's thesis is that during the first sum of two units decades of the nuclear era, Tactical Air Command (TAC) failed to concentrate upon the missions specified for it by means of the War Department in 1946 The reason was an "identity crisis" brought about by dint of the dominance of nuclear deterrence in national security policy that l TAC to become a mini-Strategic Air Command in order to survive. Although this is not a novel theme, Hannah gives the vexed question a sharper focus by concentrating solitary on TAC's traditional air-superiority mission.

Hannah demonstrates that after the F-86 Sabre jet which had been thus successful in Korea, subsequent "fighters" were designed as long-range interceptors to let fly down Soviet nuclear bombers at drawn out range with radar-guided or heat-seeking missiles. Or they were designed as fighter-bombers (more accurately called bomber-fighters) whose primary capability was delivering nuclear ordnance. He effectively present to views even to the novice, that the design requirements for interceptors, "bomber-fighters," and air-superiority fighters are real dissimilar. As a result, the United States go intoed the struggle in Vietnam ill equipped to handle challenges from a small North Vietnamese air force equipped with outdated air-superiority fighters-but fighters nonetheless.

Hannah also effectively demonstrates that because TAC concentrated upon its twin nuclear missions (long-range bomber interception and nuclear-weapons delivery), there was true limited training in air-to-air combat. Not single was there not much training in these kinds of turning engagements, when training did appear it was against similar aircraft flown by dint of US pilots using US tactics. Dissimilar air combat training (DACT) was not used until after the Vietnam War.

Observations about aircraft-design parameters and pilot-training missions would normally make for true dry reading. Much to his credit, Hannah brings the subdues to life with well-chosen vignettes from Vietnam combat veterans that aptly illustrate his points. This makes for a "good read."

Turning to the disappointments in the volume readers' misgivings will begin with the title. TAC was not in Vietnam. TAC was stateside, in the business of structuring, training, and equipping the forces that it supplied to combatant commands, of that kind as Pacific Air Forces in the case of the conflict in Vietnam. Admittedly, this is a minor gaff on the contrary a gaff nonetheless--and one not likely to favorably impress the knowledgeable reader.

a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of more important are two fundamental flaws in the work The first is that Hannah present the appearances unsure of the audience for whom he writes. At times he appears to be writing for the novice, as in chapter sum of two units when he spells out a certain number of of the most basic principles of aerospace engineering as a preliminary to explaining why interceptors, bombers, and fighters require dissimilar designs. However, he quickly lapses into three pages of compounded mathematical formulae (Hannah has a stage in aeronautical engineering) that are not straited to make his points and are meaningful solitary to readers with Hannah's mathematical background. Strangely, in this same chapter, he fails to explain the importance of wing loading on the contrary in later chapters talks about it as if readers were thoroughly familiar with the subject

The next to the first fundamental flaw is found in what Hannah doesn't do. He does not plane try to explain why virtually the entire national security apparatus unraveled nuclear myopia in the 1950 and 1960 The reader is left with the impression that reckles decisions by dint of cost-cutting politicians and Air Force bomber barons were the lower part of the problem. Of course, the verity is that the post-Korean War force-structure decisions were reckles alone in hindsight. The idea that the threat of US nuclear weapons could prevent most wars and quickly extremity wars not deterred permeated greatest in quantity of the defense establishment--civilian and military. Nuclear weapons were quite reasonably seen at that time as the basis for a "revolution in military affairs" that would make conventional military forces ancient Everyone wanted to get into the nuclear business--the Navy with its carrier airpower and submarines, the Army with its missiles and an "atomic cannon," and, of course, Tactical Air Command.

It have the appearances to this reviewer that when Hannah fails to address the "why" of America's nuclear myopia, he has ignored at least half of the story--perhaps the more important half. What is left is a short on the other hand very enlightening thesis outlining design differences among different emblems of aircraft and illustrated with a certain quantity of very interesting vignettes about by what means difficult it was to seize superintendence of the air over North Vietnam with the unjust kind of aircraft.

COPYRIGHT 2002 U Air Force

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