United States Air Force History Publications

A history of the United States Air Force describing its major commands, their designated missions, the men in command, and the men who served both before and after 1947.

Abstract : This guide seeks to aid scholars and researchers to locate collections of primary and secondary documents on the Air Force. The first part deals with official Air Force depositories, which are essential to the historian writing about its operations worldwide. The second part describes the equally important collections of the National Archives and its depositories, including the pertinent papers in the Presidential Libraries. The third part covers university and college collections of personal papers of various military and civilian leaders, as well as other documents, which deal with the Air Force. Other governmental depositories-federal, state, and local-plus a number of private collections where Air Force material may be found are listed in part four. Finally, the last section describes a variety of other collections where primary and secondary materials on military, naval, and civil aviation-which directly or indirectly have impinged on the development of the Air Force-may be found.

The fiftieth anniversary of the United States Air Force offers us an opportunity to recognize and appreciate the role that a number of gifted military and aviation pioneers played in shaping the world's only global air and space force. This book, a joint product of the Air Force History and Museums Program and the Air Force Historical Foundation, was first published in 1987. It has proven an indispensable reference work for anyone interested in the history of the service and, particularly, in the role that key individuals have played in its evolution. Many of the individuals profiled in this book are well-known to students of air and space power. Most had notable combat careers. Others were organizers, men who shaped the service according to far-seeing vision. They are a diverse bunch of over-achievers, many of whom were strongly opinionated, even about each other. But all of them were dedicated to an ideal: to produce a new form of military force, a force that would achieve victory in war by exploitation and dominance of the third dimension. In this, they were totally and uncompromisingly unified, a band of brothers who took this vision from the ground and brought it, with devastating force, to the skies of America's enemies. On this, the Air Force's Golden Anniversary, all Americans owe them our grateful appreciation.