| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Tami Davis Biddle. Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945. (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics.) Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2002. Pp. viii, 406. $45.00.

Almost since the advent of the airplane, air-minded military officers have touted its ability to win wars quickly and cheaply. As Tami Davis Biddle demonstrates, however, the gap between the rhetoric of those advocates and the reality of air power's performance has been vast. In this book, she is interested in explaining how the gap evolved and, more importantly, how it continued to exist even as the limits of air power became manifest. In doing so, she has set air power into its widest historical contexts yet and, while many of her arguments are not entirely new, has advanced the field considerably with a well-researched and carefully thought-out book. 1

The horrors of World War I's trench warfare led military planners to search for alternative ways to fight. To some, the airplane seemed the obvious answer. Between the world wars, the influential Italian writer Giulio Douhet and the British air power pioneer Hugh Trenchard envisioned an air war that would literally soar over the enemy's front defenses and directly attack civilian centers behind the lines. This kind of war, while surely more costly in civilian terms, would be quicker and cheaper than the world war just concluded. It would be won, Trenchard believed, by the nation best able both to deal a decisive blow of its own and to withstand a similar blow delivered by its enemies. . . .

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