Superbombers: A Guide to the B-29 and the B-52

Almost immediately following the flight of the first aircraft, thoughts began to turn as to how this new innovation could be used in warfare. After experience in World War 1, the conflict to follow cemented the concept of strategic bombing, whereby great fleets of bombers would rain destruction upon enemy cities and military facilities, in the hope of weakening or destroying outright an adversary’s ability to make war. The pinnacle of this came in the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs, which ended World War 2. The likelihood thereafter was that future wars would be waged by ever more powerful and longer-range aircraft capable of dropping nuclear armaments of commensurately increased power.

 

This is the time period concentrated on by author Mike Haskew, who explores the evolution of U.S. strategic air power. From the experience in Korea of the B-29 (an aircraft also reverse-engineered and produced by the Soviet Union) and the dawn of the mighty B-52 over Vietnam, he proceeds to the guardianship of the latter during the Cold War and its resumption of combat duties in the post-Cold War conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans and Afghanistan. Interspersed are profiles of forward-thinking officers whose skill in command went hand-in-hand with the development and refinement of the aircraft and their bombing techniques.