#ResearchResources – Recent Articles and Books (May 2021)

Editorial note: In this series, From Balloons to Drones highlights research resources available to researchers. Contributions range from discussions of research at various archival repositories to highlighting new publications. As part of this series, we are bringing you a monthly precis of recent articles and books published in air power history. This precis will not be exhaustive but will highlight new works published in the preceding month. Publication dates may vary around the globe and are based on those provided on the publisher’s websites. If you would like to contribute to the series, please contact our Editor-in-Chief, Dr Ross Mahoney, at airpowerstudies@gmail.com or via our contact page here.

Chapters

Peter Elliott, ‘‘Flight without feathers is not easy’: John Tanner and the development of the Royal Air Force Museum’ in Kate Hill (ed.), Museums, Modernity and Conflict: Museums and Collections in and of War since the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2021).

The founding director of the Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum, John Tanner, was the driving force behind its creation and development between 1963 and 1987.

The RAF Museum’s successful opening at Hendon in 1972 – more than 40 years after the idea was first mooted – led to expansion, through museums dedicated to the Battle of Britain and Bomber Command. It managed the RAF’s Aerospace Museum at Cosford where Tanner, working with British Airways, built up a collection of airliners. His final collaboration created the Manchester Air & Space Museum – now part of the Museum of Science and Industry.

Tanner’s overarching aim was to create a national aviation museum for the United Kingdom, comparable with those in France, Canada and the USA. Negotiations in the early 1980s with government departments failed, ironically partly due to concerns similar to those that prompted calls for an RAF Museum in the 1930s.

This chapter details the tortuous birth of the RAF Museum, and examines the conflict between an air force museum and one covering all forms of aviation. Drawing on files in the National Archives, and the Museum’s own archive, I explain why Tanner’s vision was not realised, despite his passion, dedication and forthright advocacy.

Books

Daniel Jackson, Fallen Tigers: The Fate of America’s Missing Airmen in China during World War II (Lexington, KT: The University Press of Kentucky, 2021).

Mere months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a volunteer group of American airmen to the Far East, convinced that supporting Chinese resistance against the continuing Japanese invasion would be crucial to an eventual Allied victory in World War II. Within two weeks of that fateful Sunday in December 1941, the American Volunteer Group – soon to become known as the legendary “Flying Tigers” – went into action. Audaciously led by master tactician Claire Lee Chennault, daring airmen such as David Lee “Tex” Hill and George B. “Mac” McMillan fought enemy air forces and armies in dangerous aerial duels despite being outnumbered and outgunned. Aviators who fell in combat and survived the crash or bailout faced the terrifying reality of being lost and injured in unfamiliar territory.

In Fallen Tigers: The Fate of America’s Missing Airmen in China during World War II, historian Daniel Jackson, himself a combat-tested pilot, sheds light on the stories of downed aviators who attempted to evade capture by the Japanese in their bid to return to Allied territory. In gripping detail, he reveals that the heroism of these airmen was equaled, and often exceeded, by the Chinese soldiers and civilians who risked their lives to return them safely to American custody. His comprehensive research shows the drive to aid these airmen transcended ideology, as both Chinese Communists and Nationalists realized the commonality of their struggle against a despised enemy.

Fallen Tigers is an incredible story of survival that insightfully illuminates the relationship between missing aircrew and their Chinese allies who were willing to save their lives at any cost. Based on thorough archival research and filled with compelling personal narratives from memoirs, wartime diaries, and dozens of interviews with veterans, this vital work offers an important new perspective on the Flying Tigers and the history of World War II in China.

Ben Kite, Undaunted: Britain and the Commonwealth’s War in the Air – Volume 2 (Warwick: Helion and Company, 2021).

Undaunted is the second volume of Britain and the Commonwealth’s War in the Air 1939-45. It combines detailed studies into the tactics, techniques and technology that made British air power so effective, together with the personal accounts of the aircrew themselves. Undaunted includes chapters on air intelligence, photographic-reconnaissance and Special Duties operations. It then covers how the British Commonwealth Air Forces supported ground operations in the Western Desert, Italy, NW Europe, Burma and the SW Pacific. The book contains a number of chapters on the development of airborne forces from an air perspective and covers the use of air transport in support of General Slim’s operations in Burma. Undaunted concludes with poignant chapters on the ‘Guinea Pigs’, Prisoners of War, Air Sea Rescue and the efforts of aircrew to escape and evade when shot down. Exceptionally well-illustrated with over 150 photographs and 15 maps and diagrams, this book will undoubtedly appeal to the general reader, as well as the aficionado, who will find considerable new information.

Brian Laslie, Air Power’s Lost Cause: The American Air Wars of Vietnam (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

Filling a substantial void in our understanding of the history of airpower in Vietnam, this book provides the first comprehensive treatment of the air wars in Vietnam. Brian Laslie traces the complete history of these air wars from the beginning of American involvement until final withdrawal. Detailing the competing roles and actions of the air elements of the United States Army, Navy, and Air Force, the author considers the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. He also looks at the air war from the perspective of the North Vietnamese Air Force. Most important for understanding the US defeat, Laslie illustrates the perils of a nation building a one-dimensional fighting force capable of supporting only one type of war.