Archie, Flak, AAA, and SAM; A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air Defense

xx, 198, [2] pages. Format is approximately 6.875 inches by 9.5 inches. Cover has some wear and soiling. Dr. Kenneth Werrell's history of ground-based air defense performs an important service both to scholarship and, more important, to the defense of our nation's freedom. It is perhaps human nature that we tend over time to lose sight of the lessons of the past, especially when they do not conform to certain cherished preconceptions of ours. That such myopia can be dangerous, if not downright disastrous, Doctor Werrell's study richly illustrates. Without sentimentalism, he chronicles a pattern of lessons learned and too quickly forgotten, as the marvel of air power was reminded again and again of its limitations and vulnerability. In Korea and in Vietnam, the American people were stripped of their illusions of national and technical omnipotence. The unhappy outcome of those two conflicts were doubly lamentable because the lessons of World War II wereor should have beenfresh in our minds. In that world war, as Doctor Werrell shows, relatively cheap ground-based air defense did make a difference: at Ploesti, at Antwerp, and at the Rhine bridges. Kenneth P. Werrell graduated in the second class of the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1960 and went on to pilot a weather reconnaissance aircraft flying into 44 Pacific typhoons and observing the last above-ground nuclear test. After leaving the service in 1965, he attended Duke University earning a MA and Ph.D. in history. Anti-aircraft warfare or counter-air defence is defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action." They include ground and air-based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements and passive measures (e.g. barrage balloons). It may be used to protect naval, ground, and air forces in any location. However, for most countries the main effort has tended to be 'homeland defence'. NATO refers to airborne air defence as counter-air and naval air defence as anti-aircraft warfare. Missile defence is an extension of air defence as are initiatives to adapt air defence to the task of intercepting any projectile in flight.…