P-51 Escorts: Legend or Myth
Abstract
As recently as the fall of 2009, a distinguished lecturer at the US Air Force's Air War College repeated a "truth" that has been with us for 60 years. So strongly held, it has seldom, if ever, been questioned. This assertion arises, I suppose, from historians' common tendency to go into the record with the question "Why were they so dumb?" or "Why were they not as smart as the present generation"? The revealed "truth" holds that interwar Airmen were so hypnotized by their own strategic bombing wisdom that they failed to reasonably predict that bombers would require fighter escorts to survive and that such fighters were technologically feasible. What were the real reasons why such luminaries as Kenneth Walker, Haywood Hansell, Carl Spaatz, and Claire Chennault (yes, Mr. Fighter Pilot himself) all concluded that the idea of escort fighters for long-range bombers was impractical--desirable, but impractical? Is it possible that it was not ignorance but logic that made them so conclude?
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA523654
Entities
People
- David R. Mets
Organizations
- Air University