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This insightful work holds many lessons in tactical air-ground operations. Despite peacetime rivalries in the drafting of service doctrine, in World War II the immense pressures of wartime drove army and air commanders to cooperate in the effective prosecution of battlefield operations. In northwest Europe during the war, the combination of U.S. Third Army commanded by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton and the XIX Tactical Air Command led by Brig. Gen. Otto P. Weyland proved to be the most effective allied air-ground team of World War II. The great success of Patton's drive across France, ultimately crossing the Rhine, and then racing across southern German, owed a great deal to Weyland's airman of the XIX tactical Air Command. This deft cooperation paved the way for allied victory in Western Europe and today remains a classic example of air-ground effectiveness.

The fight for air superiority began the day the Korean War started and only ended with the armistice three years later. Once the shock of the North Koreans' invasion wore off, it did not take long for the United States Air Force, assisted by other United Nations air forces, to destroy the North Korean Air Force. The arrival of the MiG-15 in November 1950, often flown by Soviet pilots, changed things considerably however. For the remainder of the war, bitterly contested air battles were fought almost daily. Yet despite a decided numerical superiority in jet fighters, the Communists were never able to gain air superiority, testament to the skill and training of the UN fighter pilots, primarily those U.S. Air Force airmen flying the magnificent F-86 Sabre.

Before the Korean War, the primary mission of Lt. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer's Far East Air Forces was air defense of the Japanese homeland. Most of the aircraft constituting Stratemeyer's inventory were interceptors, not designed for the type of combat that would be required now that the United States was joining in the UN effort to end the war in Korea. The Joint Army/USAAF doctrine of 1946, known as Field Manual 31-35, Air Ground Operations, was also considered outdated in the present circumstance. A new approach to warfighting had to be developed in response to the strong influence of General Douglas MacArthur and other of his air officers in the Army-dominated General Headquarters Far East Command. Close air support of the ground forces as provided by Fifth Air Force came at some cost, and tempers flared in the process, but the air commanders in Korea never deprived the ground commanders of close air support if it was needed. Indeed, without the close air support provided to the airmen, the ground campaign would have been a much more bloody and difficult affair than it was.

In commemoration of the Korean War, the U.S. Air Force History Program published several works. One is this manuscript, a companion volume to the air war chronology entitled The USAF in Korea: A Chronology, 1950-1953, which details monthly and daily USAF activities and operations in the theater. This pamphlet, The USAF in Korea: Campaigns, Units, and Stations, 1950- 1953, provides information on the ten combat campaigns of the Korean War and gives an organizational view of tactical and support organizations carrying out combat operations. It also locates organizations or elements of organizations at their stations in Korea during the war and identifies designated K-Sites. The first part of the manuscript describes and illustrates the Korean service medal and service streamer and the ten designated campaigns of the Korean War. Accompanied by pertinent maps, the campaign narratives are general and selective rather than comprehensive, with each summary highlighting aerial combat. This section is extracted from Dr. A. Timothy Warnock's reference work Air Force Combat Medals, Streamers, and Campaigns (Washington: USGPO, 1990). The second section comprises briefs on the combat flying organizations and a selected number of combat support organizations that operated in the theater. In instances where the tactical group and wing of the same number began combat at different times, the first to enter combat is summarized first; if both began operational missions at the same time, information on the parent wing is given first. Each brief in section two contains an operational summary of a given organization's activities in the war, but specific information in the Chronology is not repeated here. Next, where pertinent, is a listing of flying or mission components. Following that is an organization's station list based on information in the organization's histories; in some cases, the station shown in the brief will not agree with the station listings found in the third section of. The commanders of groups and wings are listed next, and where applicable, Korean War campaign streamers, Korean War decorations, and Medal of Honor recipients are identified. The organizations' official emblems at the time of the Korean War appear with their descriptions or blazons. The third part of the manuscript contains the available official lists of Air Force units and organizations located in Korea, extracted directly from the bimonthly publication, Directory of USAF Organizations, issued by HQ USAF DCS/Comptroller. These listings date from July 1, 1950, which showed no USAF unit or organization located in Korea, to July 1, 1953, which listed stations and organizations located in Korea just before the end of the conflict. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate two issues of this series - May 1, 1951, and July 1, 1951. The issue of April 1952 was a special edition; then, the series reverted to bimonthly issues. These lists appear exactly as shown in the directories. The data contained in each issue reflects information provided by FEAF and other commands to the HQ USAF, Directorate of Statistical Services, Machine Accounting Division, through the end of the previous month. In some instances, the inputs did not specifically identify the location of an organization, leaving the reader to guess whether an organization was located in the town or at a nearby air base or airdrome. Rendering Korean place names in English inevitably results in a variety of spellings, and these lists are no exception. For example, the location generally known in USAF documents as Kangnung is in these lists consistently spelled as Kangnumg. The final section is a listing, both numerically and alphabetically, of locations in Korea identified as K-Sites. The place name spellings used are those found in Fifth Air Force general orders designating the K-Sites and other official Fifth Air Force documents. Also included is a map of Korea that approximately locates each K-Site.

This document is part of the United States Air Force's Korean War Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Series. "We now know, as we never knew it in the Air Force before, that we can fly anything, anywhere, any time. Climate, mountains, oceans-those can't stop us."

Spanning the decades form the beginning of the Cold War to today's strategy of global engagement, the twenty-three operational summaries in this book illustrate each of the objective for military operations other than wart. The USAF conducted each of these contingencies in a combat zone or area of serious civil disturbance. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a series of geographically localized crises caused by political, religious or ethnic unrest; outright military aggression; and natural disasters has replaced the relative stability that characterized international relations for more than 50 years of the Cold War. For the United States Air Force, this has meant short notice deployments, air lifts, and other operational missions conducted in reaction to local crises. Such missions have come to dominate Air Force Operations.

This is an institutional history of flight training by the predecessor organizations of the United States Air Force. The U.S. Army purchased its first airplane, built and successfully flown by Orville and Wilbur Wright, in 1909, and paced both lighter-and heavier-than-air aeronautics in the Division of Military Aeronautics of the Signal Corps. Americans flew combat missions in France during World War I and during World War II. During this first era of military aviation, the groundwork was laid for the independent United States Air Force. This document is primarily based on official documents that are house in the National Archives and Records Administration. It is the first definitive study of this important subject.

To some people, the Korean War was just a "police action," preferring that euphemism to what it really was - a brutal and bloody war involving hundreds of thousands of air, ground, and naval forces from many nations. It was also termed a "limited war," in that it took place in a small region of the world versus the worldwide conflict that had ended less than five years earlier. But this "police action," this "limited war," cost an estimated 2.4 million military casualties on both sides, while at least another 2 million civilians were also casualties. The United States military alone suffered 33,742 killed and another 103,234 wound-ed. The war in the air was as bloody and violent as that on the ground. The United Nations air forces lost 1,986 aircraft, with the USAF sustaining 1,466 of these. Air Force personnel casualties totaled 1,841, including 1,180 dead. These losses were far greater than can be accounted for in the glib terms "police action" and "limited war." As the years passed following the end of the war, Korea receded in memory. Another war - in Southeast Asia - became lodged in the public's mind, and the Korean War became "forgotten." But to those veterans and historians alike participating in the proceedings recorded in this volume, their reminiscences and perspectives provide the reader with compelling arguments why the Korean War deserves to be remembered.

As we conclude our year-long recognition of the 100th anniversary of powered flight, we take this opportunity to recognize and pay tribute to airmen of the past and present. We do this with an eye toward inspiring airmen of the future. General Frank M. Andrews was an inspirational figure in our history and it is fitting that we highlight his accomplishments and contributions in the creation, shaping, and development of the United States Air Force. As the organizer and commander of the prewar General Headquarters (GHQ) Air Force, he was the first airman to have centralized nationwide command of Air Corps bombardment, attack, and pursuit units. The advent of GHQ Air Force marked one of the first decisive steps on the road to the birth of a separate air service. Nevertheless, likely due to his personal modesty and untimely death in a B-24 crash in, May 1943, while commanding the European Theater of Operations, he has been a background figure in our history. General George C. Marshall, wartime Chief of Staff of the Army, captured the magnitude of his tragic loss to the Allied war effort by characterizing Andrews as one of the nation's "few great captains." Memorializing General Andrews is one example of how we can commemorate the Centennial of Flight, emphasizing the tremendous impact an individual's efforts and contributions can have on aviation and the Air Force.

In the Persian Gulf War the U.S. Air Force (USAF) demonstrated that a new era in strategic bombing had begun. Air power could now destroy key portions of a county's military and economic infrastructure without resort to nuclear weapons and heavy bombers and with low losses to both the attacker and enemy civilians. This achievement rested on technology, which both increased bombing accuracy and decreased the effectiveness of enemy defenses, and the reexamination and reapplication of traditional strategic bombing theory by USAF planning officers.

On the morning of May 18, 1916, a German LVG appeared in the sky over Thann in the Vosges region, near the ancient French city of Nancy. The LVG was a well-armed, two-seat observation airplane and the Vosges a quiet sector of the Western Front, in stark contrast to the merciless slaughter taking place to the north at Verdun. Normally the two airmen could expect to do their reconnaissance with little interruption, but on this day they had left luck behind. A speck appeared in the sky to the west and rapidly grew into an enemy pursuit aircraft, an avion de chasse, an agile, single-seat Nieuport. The Germans, busy at their trade, failed to see the enemy draw near. A veteran hunter or more cautious pilot might have seized the opportunity to surprise the LVG and launch an attack out of the sun or from behind a cloud, but this one approached directly, without guile. Suddenly aware of the danger, the observer seized his machine gun and began firing while the pilot turned the airplane toward the safety of the German lines. The chasse pilot closed to point blank range and, just as a collision appeared imminent, fired a quick burst, then swerved away. The encounter was over that quickly. Both the observer and pilot collapsed; the LVG rolled and plunged to earth; the Nieuport banked away leaving a plume of smoke to mark the scene of combat. French troops witnessed the brief fight and by the time the Nieuport reached its field at Luxeuil-les-Bains had confirmed the kill. It was an auspicious event. Everything about the victorious aircraft said "France" except the pilot's name. Kiffen Yates Rockwell was an American citizen assigned to Escadrille N 124, known unofficially as l'Escadrille Americaine, and his victory was the unit's first. It was quick and impressive by contemporary standards of air combat. Rockwell had engaged at incredibly close range, almost sticking his gun into the enemy cockpit, but his daring attack allowed the LVG's observer to put a hole in the Nieuport's top wing main spar. Rockwell, in turn, killed the two men with only four bullets, a marvelous feat of marksmanship. Cheering comrades lifted him from the cockpit and began a wild celebration. Atradition began with N 124's first victory. Rockwell's brother Paul, serving elsewhere in the French Army, provided a bottle of eighty-year-old bourbon. Kiffen Rockwell took the first drink, but the Escadrille set aside the rest. From then on, credit for downing an enemy aircraft earned the victorious pilot a shot from "The Bottle of Death."

During the perilous years of 1940-1941, a small band of Americans joined the Royal Air Force to help England resist Nazi Germany. They did so while the United States remained a neutral power and overcame significant obstacles to accomplish their objective. Over time, the RAF formed three fighter units, known collectively as the Eagle Squadrons, around these volunteer pilots. These Americans flew alongside their British comrades in fighter and bomber escort missions until 1942, when they transferred into the United States Army Air Forces. The Eagle Squadron pilots made noteworthy contributions to the RAF, assisting them in their transition from fighting a defensive war to waging an offensive campaign against the German Luftwaffe and helping pave the way to an eventual Allied victory.

This manuscript offers a vivid, candid and highly personal account of military life by four of the first five Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force. Their recollections were captured in an interview at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. and cover a period of over thirty years - from the early 1940's to the late 1970's. The position of chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force (held by only 10 individuals since its establishment in 1966) has given all enlisted service members a representative who has direct access to, and the ability to advise, the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force. It has also imparted to each of the interviewees broad and insightful perspectives of the issues discussed.

On March 15, 1916, the 1st Aero Squadron arrived at Columbus, New Mexico, its train steaming into the crowded, chaotic town at 9:15 in the morning. Led by Capt. Benjamin D. Foulois, a lantern-jawed, bantam-weight former enlisted man, the squadron included eleven officers, eighty-two enlisted men, and one civilian technician. Under Foulois's direction, the men unloaded an automobile, six motorcycles, and twelve motor trucks, vehicles rare in 1916 New Mexico and even rarer in an army still wedded to the horse and mule. These were followed by wooden crates containing eight wood, wire, and fabric Curtiss JN-3 biplanes, every airplane owned by the U.S. Army, save those assigned to its aviation school at San Diego, California. The squadron was in Columbus to join an expedition commanded by Brig. Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing. President Woodrow Wilson had ordered Pershing's force into Mexico in response to a March 9 attack on the tiny border town by the Mexican desperado, Francisco "Pancho" Villa. The event was auspicious. For the first time, the U.S. Army's entire air force-the 1st Aero Squadron-had deployed for an active campaign. The course of the Punitive Expedition can be quickly summarized. Pershing's forces crossed into Mexico on March 15, 1916, and for the next month, several carefully coordinated cavalry columns pressed southward hrough the state of Chihuahua in an effort to locate Villa, while trying to avoid confrontations with troops loyal to the Mexican government, who were unhelpful at best and often downright unfriendly. Behind the cavalry, the expedition was supported along a lengthening line of communications extending from Columbus through bases at Colonia Dublán, Namiquipa, Bachíniva, SanAntonio de los Arenales, and Satevó, the last over three hundred miles from the United States. The hard-riding cavalry ultimately reached Parral, another seven-ty miles south of Satevó, where a fight with Mexican government forces on April 15 marked the southern terminus of the American advance. Subsequently, at the limit of his logistic capability and concerned about threats to his extended line of communications, Pershing assumed a defensive posture. He organized the area controlled by the Punitive Expedition into districts, each patrolled by a cavalry regiment that harried guerrillas and kept an eye on government forces. Pershing maintained this position until the Punitive Expedition withdrew from Mexico early in 1917. The 1st Aero Squadron played a significant role in the Punitive Expedition, but, in dramatic contrast to how an air force functions today, it served as a means of communication and observation, not as a combatant arm. Some experiments with bombs and machine guns had been conducted, and the war in Europe was quickly turning the airplane into a serious weapon of war. Nevertheless, U.S. Army leaders envisioned aviation's primary mission to be the receipt and trans mission of information for tactical commanders and long-distance scouting as an adjunct to the cavalry. Accordingly, during the mobile phase of the Punitive Expedition, the 1st Aero Squadron enabled Pershing to locate and communicate with his widely dispersed, fast-moving columns and carried dispatches between Pershing's main and advanced bases. The squadron also scouted for hostile forces and kept a watch for threats to Pershing's line of communications. As will be seen, these efforts were made in some of the worst weather and poorest conditions imaginable, and by the end of April, all eight airplanes had been destroyed. During the static phase of the Punitive Expedition, the 1st Aero Squadron remained at Columbus, where Foulois and his men operated a test and evaluation program for a wide variety of airplanes and aviation equipment. During both phases of the campaign, the officers and men of the 1st Aero Squadron learned lessons about airplanes, equipment, and operations in the field that would be applied in France less than a year later.

This volume deals with the early years of the United States Air Force's effort to build and maintain a strategic striking force, for 1945 through 1953. It discusses the period of reorganization in national defense in the years after the end of the Second World War, as Army Defense Forces dealt with the questions of structure, doctrine, strategy, atomic weapons, and technology. Crucial decisions were made at the end of 1947 and that beginning of 1948, but fiscal austerity limited the new United States Air Force in implementing those decisions. The war in Korea triggered and expansion of the armed forces that culminated in a new look of the Eisenhower administration and emphasized nuclear air power as the foundation of a national strategy of containment and deterrence.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Germany and Italy joined Japan four days later in declaring war against the United States, intelligence essential for the Army Air Forces to conduce effective warfare in the European and Pacific theaters did not exist. The manuscript tells the intriguing story of how airmen build intelligence organizations to collect and process information about the enemy and to produce and disseminate intelligence to decision makers and warfighters in the bloody, horrific crucible of war. More that organizational history, this manuscript reveals the indispensable and necessary secret role intelligence plays in effectively waging war. It examines World War II as a watershed period for Air Force Intelligence and for the acquisition and use of signals intelligence, photo reconnaissance intelligence, human resources intelligence, and scientific and technical intelligence. Air Force History and Museums Program.

This book looks at the Air Force's support of the ground war in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1968. The book covers the period of time when the United States began moving from an advisory role to one of active involvement to just before the time when the United Stated gradually began disengaging from the war. The final scene is the successful air campaign conducted during the Communists siege of the Marine camp at Khe Sanh. While the actual siege lasted from late January to the middle of March 1968, enemy preparations for the encirclement were seen as early as October 1967.

No experience etched itself more deeply into Air Force thinking than the air campaigns over North Vietnam. Two decades later in the deserts of Southwest Asia, American airmen were able to avoid the gradualism that cost so many lives and planes in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Readers should come away from this book with a sympathetic understanding of the men who bombed North Vietnam. Those airmen handled tough problems in ways that ultimately reshaped the Air Force into the effective instrument on display in the Gulf War. This book is a sequel to Jacob Van Staaveren's Gradual Failure: The Air War over North Vietnam, 1965-1966, which we have also declassified and are publishing. Wayne Thompson tells how the Air Force used that failure to build a more capable service-a service which got a better opportunity to demonstrate the potential of air power in 1972. Dr. Thompson began to learn about his subject when he was an Army draftee assigned to an Air Force intelligence station in Taiwan during the Vietnam War. He took time out from writing To Hanoi and Back to serve in the Checkmate group that helped plan the Operation Desert Storm air campaign against Iraq. Later he visited Air Force pilots and commanders in Italy immediately after the Operation Deliberate Force air strikes in Bosnia. During Operation Allied Force over Serbia and its Kosovo province, he returned to Checkmate. Consequently, he is keenly aware of how much the Air Force has changed in some respects-how little in others. Although he pays ample attention to context, his book is about the Air Force. He has written a well-informed account that is both lively and thoughtful.

The Air Force History and Museums Program has prepared accounts of the United States Air Force and the war in Southeast Asia according to a design that reflects the compartmentalized nature of the conflict itself. Besides the special studies like the illustrated history (The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973: An Illustrated Account) and the monographs, some of them quite lengthy, on topics like rescue or tactical airlift, the Air Force history program has published volumes on the air wars over South Vietnam and Cambodia, North Vietnam, and Laos. This book is the last of three recounting operations in Laos, one of them dealing with the war in the northern part of that kingdom and the other two with aerial interdiction in the south. This history covers the critical years from 1968 through 1972, when the Air Force carried out the Commando Hunt series of aerial interdiction campaigns against the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos, trying, in conjunction with ground actions, to use air power and electronics to impede the movement of men and supplies from North Vietnam to the battlefields of South Vietnam. Conducted during the time the United States was withdrawing ground forces and turning the war over to the greatly strengthened armed forces of South Vietnam, Commando Hunt sought to prevent a North Vietnamese offensive that would take advantage of the declining U. S. presence. That attack did not come until March 1972 and not only stopped short of overrunning South Vietnam, but also was a setback for the Hanoi government and a cease-fire agreement. The invasion, however, signaled the end of Commando Hunt, for the South Vietnamese did not take over the electronic surveillance network-with its computer, sensors, and communications equipment-that made the series of aerial interdiction operations possible. "The real war," said Walt Whitman, "will never get in the books." Yet, even though they cannot conjure up the realities of death and suffering, heroism and sacrifice, books like this have a purpose, offering the counsel of the past to help today's policy makers. What useful principle can they derive from an account of the events of a few years in a unique part of the world? Stripped of all that links it to a particular time, place, and strategy, this narrative warns them that a determined enemy may be able to use geography, climate, and ingenuity to blunt the cutting edge of technology. Against such a foe, what seems flawless in theory or has succeeded brilliantly in tests may fail in actual combat, but what fails on one battlefield may succeed years later on another. In the last analysis, military genius does not reside in compiling lists of lessons learned, but in analyzing the past and applying its distilled wisdom in new, perhaps unique, circumstances.

This book was first published in 1987 and has proven an indispensable reference work for anyone interested in the history of the U.S. Air Force, and particularly, in the role that key individuals have played in its evolution. Many of the individuals profiled in this book are well-known to students of air and space power. All of them were dedicated to an ideal - to produce a new form of military force, a force that would achieve victory in war by exploitation and dominance of the third dimension. Includes discussions of Benjamin Foulois, Frank Andrews, Harold George, Hugh Knerr, George Kenney, Willem Kepner, Elwood Quesada, Hoyt Vandenberg, Benjamin Davis, Jr., Bernard Schriever and Robinson Risner.

Discusses the terrorist truck bombing of Khobar Towers that occurred in Saudi Arabia on June 25, 1996. Nineteen American servicemen were killed and many people were injured. First published in 2008. Illustrated.

Originally released in 2006. Contains papers from a symposium on the Korean War held at the U.S. Congress on June 7, 2000. Records the reminiscences and perspectives of veterans and historians participating in the symposium.