THE LIMITS OF AIR POWER by MARK CLODFELTER

Author:MARK CLODFELTER
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Free Press
Published: 1989-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

Air leaders viewed Momyer’s axiom, which paraphrased Douglas MacArthur’s evaluation of the Korean War, as the overriding lesson of Rolling Thunder. Sharp, Wheeler, and Moore echoed the remark in their assessments of the air campaign.141 Their statements leave no doubt as to the air chiefs’ conviction that they would have gained victory had Johnson given them a free hand. Their assumption lacked substance, however. The nature of the war—plus the air commanders’ own controls—argued strongly that Rolling Thunder could never provide more than token support to Johnson’s political objectives. Air leaders like Sharp, who pointed to the 1972 air campaigns as examples that Rolling Thunder could have achieved American goals earlier, failed to notice that neither the war nor the American objectives were the same in 1972 as they were in 1965. They also failed to observe that the result of the 1972 campaigns was not the total victory they had aimed to achieve.

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