English

DTIC ADA522125: The Myth of Air Control: Reassessing the History

Dr. Corum provides a historical look at air-control operations in the British Empire during the first half of the twentieth century. The idea of occupying and pacifying a country with air-power alone has always appealed to airmen. The author, however, argues that advocating air-control doctrine as the basis for US Air Force operations in the twenty-first century lies more in the realm of myth than reality. In the aftermath of World War I, a financially strapped Britain had to face up to several expensive, new colonial obligations in the form of League of Nations mandates to govern Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. At the same time that the armed forces received orders to assume a costly burden of military occupation in regions rife with violent internal conflicts, the government moved to demobilize the wartime forces and to economize by any means possible. This meant that the British had to police new imperial obligations on the cheap. At the same time, the Royal Air Force (RAF), which had recently become a separate service in April 1918, was fighting for its institutional existence. Both the army and navy argued that the RAF ought to revert to its position as a subordinate arm of

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