Winged Victory: The Army Air Forces in World War II

by Geoffrey Perret, Geoffrey Perrett, Geoffrey. Perret

Book Overview

A behind-the-scenes look at the heroism of American fighter pilots during World War II chronicles the drama of the great aerial campaigns. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375750479
• ISBN13: 9780375750472
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 559 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Going about it wrong and winning anyway

It's an ambitious project to tell the history of the Army Air Forces in World War II in one volume, but Geoffrey Perret goes beyond that, and he`s up to it. He begins with a capsule history of Army aviation from the start. If you're looking for shoot-'em-up whoop-de-do, go elsewhere. Perret is primarily an institutional historian and nearly half the book is done before a shot is fired. Something has to give, and it's logistics. Within the compass of fewer than 500 pages, Perret does a fine job on leaders, tactics, planes (but not other types of equipment, such as weapons, communications and navigation); and a reasonable job on politics (home and foreign), recruitment and training. Strategy is another matter, which I'll get to later. I would not have thought you could write a history of the AAF without mentioning Takoradi, but Perret has done it. To a great but not overwhelming degree, this is the story of Hap Arnold's Army Air Forces. Arnold had many flaws, such as limiting his pool of commanders to a few, sometimes not very good mates from his younger days, but overall Perret is an admirer. He says he cannot imagine anyone else commanding the air force, no one else standing up to George Marshall of the ground forces or Ernest King of the navy. Well, as the French say, the graveyards are full of indispensable men. But Perret is probably right that Tooey Spaatz, the most likely replacement, would not have done well. Spaatz had a good deal of the idiot in him, claiming as late as 1943 that by maintaining 36 sorties per day by heavy bombers he could control enemy shipping in the Mediterranean. (Perret acknowledges that some people at the time thought Frank Andrews would have excelled Arnold, but Andrews was killed in a crash. Indispensable men again.) Spaatz and his fantasies about heavy bombing is as good an example as any of the hidebound, stupid, blinkered ideology that cost so many Americans their lives -- Germans, Japanese and assorted would-be bystanders as well, of course. There are many such. Arnold was as guilty of this incompetence as anyone. Since the first heavier-than-air plane went up, the flyers have been promising that strategic bombing would win wars quickly and cheaply. The idiocy of this as ideology ought to be transparent, but apparently it isn't: If each side has a strategic bomber force, who wins? These promises have never been fulfilled, although they continue to be made in 2009. Perret is, with one important exception, clear about this. "The tenor of this book is a skeptical one," he writes on the last page, "questioning the official Air Force view of the success of strategic bombing, criticizing the Air Force's highest leadership, and casting doubt on the official history of the AAF." The key point that Perret is insufficiently skeptical about is the ur-sin, the mistake that begat most of the other mistakes: Billy Mitchell. Perret does not have a profound understanding of sea power, and while he is somewhat dispar

An unbiased history

One of the best books you will find on the Army Air Force prior to and during World War II. This is one of the few authors that doesn't impose his opinions on the reader. He goes out of his way to give both sides of an issue or a personality. Even such controversial figures as Britain's Bernard Montgomery or our own Douglas MacArthur are treated with an even-handedness that is all too rare. Very entertaining and very informative.

On the fence.

Four stars or three stars?? The book is a readable narative that the author doeasn't claim to be definitive. To use military lingo it's written in the "tactical" rather than the "strategic". Not subject matter but writing approach. I would have preferred more policy and less execution. The high level decision making process and those who made them are too quickly skimmed over for my taste. The book tends to bog down in statistics too often. But to cover the entire WW11 air war from the army's standpoint in one book is a daunting task! The book ends up more of a "battle" book and lacks the depth that an exhaustive study would produce. Let's say three and a half stars.

Winged Victory

Very interesting book. I read it cover to cover. A good book for any history buff.

Readable, informative and overly personality driven.

Mr. Perret's work is good for a single volume history of the AAC in WW2. However, it is too wrapped up in personalities, particularly that of Gen. Hap Arnold, and overly consumed with the Mediterranean Theatre. If this were a cradle to grave history of the Air Corps, or a biography of General Arnold, the time spent at the beginning dealing with the early careers and personalities of the Air Corps might be relevant. However, this is a history of the AAC in WW2 and the space spent on the early years of the the Army's flying organization, and the misadventures of its later commanding generals would have been better spent telling the tale during WW2. Too much focus rests on the Mediterranean Theatre. So little space was devoted to the operations of the Eighth and other Air Forces based in England that Mr. Perret added nothing to my knowledge of the subject from Col. Boyne's "Clash of Wings." And as for the Pacific, either the AAC accomplished little (as some in the Navy would insist) or it was seriously neglected. Details of the tempo and nature of operations are lacking except for the occassional recounted exploit. Too often we're treated to musings about Arnold's frustration with this or that item. Still, Perret lays a good ground-work to start from, but I won't be stopping with him. Despite some nice descriptions of the aircraft employed, some informative work on Chennault and the AVG, and an amusing confirmation of the Air Force's cradle-bred and ongoing obsession with appearances, this is not a definitive work on the subject.