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Considered policy or haphazard evolution? No. 617 Squadron RAF 1943 - 45
No full textFollowing their breaching of German dams in May 1943, No. 617 Squadron, Royal Air Force, was maintained as a specialist precision bombing unit. For the remainder of the Second World War the Squadron carried out precision attacks using new and unconventional weapons, culminating with Barnes Wallis’s deep penetration bombs, TALLBOY and GRAND SLAM.
This thesis will show that the numerous accounts of the Squadron’s history have failed to take account of many factors that determined its role. By concentrating on the operational record and weapons, both popular historians and scholars have given a distorted and interpretatively incomplete description of the Squadron’s development. This in turn has led to an incomplete perception of the Squadron’s Development and a misconception of its full contribution to the bomber offensive. This thesis identifies policy and decision making bodies and examines their role in selecting weapons and targets for the Squadron. It explores the issues which determined the role played by the Squadron: changes in Air Staff policy for Bomber Command, choice of targets, the development and production of weapons, and tactical requirements. Comparison is made between the planners’ original intentions and the final operational record. Many of the Squadron’s operations emerged from an inability to follow through from initial planning. Such failure resulted from factors that included unrealistic expectations of weapon performance, delays in the development of new weapons, and political intervention. Alternative targets were selected not only to take advantage of the Squadron’s existing capabilities but also to address specific issues that were often imposed on the planners by outside agencies which would have otherwise diverted Bomber Command from the main offensive. In other instances the Squadron was used to supplement existing operations carried out by main force. The gestation time for new weapons was such that when a weapon emerged its originally intended targets were no often longer relevant. Accordingly, new targets had to be found. The Squadron’s role in the development and assessment of weapons, equipment and new techniques for the Command is revealed to be greater than previously recognised. This new approach to the Squadron’s wartime role examines the policy and planning backstory to the Squadron’s operations. It reveals a hitherto unrecognised complexity in the evolution of the Squadron’s role, and demonstrates how haphazard delays and setbacks were transformed into new policy to meet ever changing requirements
Strategy and Grand Strategy: What Students and Practitioners Need to Know
Get PDFIn this monograph, Dr. Tami Davis Biddle examines why it is so difficult to devise, implement, and sustain sound strategies and grand strategies. Her analysis begins with an examination of the meaning of the term “strategy” and a history of the ways that political actors have sought to employ strategies and grand strategies to achieve their desired political aims. She examines the reasons why the logic undergirding strategy is often lacking and why challenges of implementation (including bureaucratic politics, unforeseen events, civil-military tensions, and domestic pressures) complicate and undermine desired outcomes. This clear-headed critique, built on a broad base of literature (historical and modern; academic and policy-oriented), will serve as a valuable guide to students and policymakers alike as they seek to navigate their way through the unavoidable challenges—and inevitable twists and turns—inherent in the development and implementation of strategy.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1429/thumbnail.jp
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Strategy and grand strategy ::what students and practitioners need to know /
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Coercion Theory: A Basic Introduction for Practitioners (Spring 2020)
No full textWhile coercion theory may be well understood in the academy, it is less well understood by practitioners, especially in the military. This can cause difficulties in civil-military communications and cause problems for national strategy and military outcomes. In this essay, Tami Davis Biddle clarifies, systematizes, and makes more readily accessible the language of coercion theory.LBJ School of Public Affair
The Science of Bombing: Operational Research in RAF Bomber Command. By Randall T.Wakelam. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. ix + 347p., ill., notes, bibl., index, app. ISBN 0-8020-9629-8 $55.00)
No full textAir Power and Warfare: A Century of Theory and History
Get PDFIn this monograph, Tami Davis Biddle analyzes the historical record of air power over the past 100 years. Her monograph, designed for the student of strategy, is intended to provide both a concise introduction to the topic and a framework for thinking intelligently about air power, particularly aerial bombing. Her primary aim is to discern the distinction between what has been expected of air power by theorists and military institutions, and what it has produced in the crucible of war. Aerial bombing, Biddle argues, is a coercive activity in which an attacker seeks to structure the enemy’s incentives—using threats and actions to shape and constrain the enemy’s options, both perceived and real. It is an important and much-utilized military instrument for both deterrence and compellence. In addition, it is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the joint warfighter. Its ability to achieve anticipated results, however, varies with circumstances. Students of strategy must be able to discern and understand the conditions under which aerial bombing is more or less likely to achieve the results expected of it by those who employ it.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1377/thumbnail.jp
"HANDS ACROSS THE SEA": THE ANGLO-AMERICAN MILITARY RELATIONSHIP, 1917-1941
Get PDFThis dissertation analyzes the relationship that developed between the British Army and the United States Army between 1917 and 1941. Although those two forces operated as allies during World War I, both nations’ leaders grew frustrated with each other following the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. Officers in both armies built on their positive wartime experiences, however, to ensure their armies viewed each other as prospective allies should a future global conflict arise. In the two decades after World War I, personal exchanges initiated by individual officers and information sharing between these two armies improved relations and encouraged cooperation in a number of areas. The resulting cordiality that spread to a majority of the officers in both armies manifested itself in their socializing, reports, war plans, professional journals, and personal papers. Long before President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill took steps toward forming the Anglo-American alliance during World War II, their nations’ armies laid the military foundation for the special relationship.Histor
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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