Editorial Note: Led by Editor Dr Mike Hankins, From Balloons to Drones, produces a monthly podcast that provides an outlet for the presentation and evaluation of air power scholarship, the exploration of historical topics and ideas, and provides a way to reach out to both new scholars and the general public. You can find our Soundcloud channel here. You can also find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
The Pacific Theater of the Second World War was massive and had vast numbers of ships and aeroplanes. Keeping a force like that operational and effective takes tremendous work behind the scenes. In our latest episode, Dr Stan Fisher takes us through his new book, Sustaining the Carrier War: The Deployment of U.S. Naval Air Power to the Pacific, to show the often overlooked people behind the scenes: the mechanics and maintainers who kept the planes working and kept the carriers able to keep air power in the air in the war against Japan.
Dr Stan Fisher, a commander in the U.S. Navy, is an assistant professor of naval and American history at the United States Naval Academy. Before transitioning to the classroom, he accumulated over 2,500 flight hours as a US Navy pilot, mainly in SH-60B & MH-60R Seahawk helicopters. He earned a commission through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1997 and has multiple deployments on frigates, cruisers, and aircraft carriers. Fisher has also served as a weapons and tactics instructor, squadron maintenance officer, and operational test director. Additionally, he has completed tours of duty in engineering and acquisitions at the Naval Air Systems Command. He is a past recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship and earned his PhD from the University of Maryland.
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This podcast was interesting. The enlisted personnel of our military services are exceptional. Each time I hear stories about them I cheer since I, too, was enlisted and later commissioned under the Airman’s Enlisted Commissioning Program. Many senior enlisted were more than willing to mentor me as I progressed. Thank you, Sergeant Nakano. Jim Boyless, Major, USAF, Ret.
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