Customer Reviews

ROLLING THUNDER: Jet Combat From WW II to the Gulf War

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book analyzes the evolution of jet air superiority warfare from the German Me-262 of 1944-45 through the mid-1990s. More than being a mere compilation of aircraft performance statistics, photographs and macho war stories (all of which are somewhat lacking), Rolling Thunder analyzes the major jet air superiority campaigns to date - late-WWII, Korea, Cold War bomber-intercept development, Vietnam, Israel's 1960s-80s conflicts, the Falklands, Desert Storm and post-Desert Storm in the Balkans and the Iraqi "no-fly zones".

I do NOT agree with other reviewers who compare it unfavorably to more narrowly focused books or complain about focus on the U.S. Air Force (there's a lot about German, British, Israeli and non-Western air forces) And let's face it: the U.S. Navy did not have good enough jets to maintain air superiority in Korea and in Desert Storm the Navy only downed two Iraqi jets compared to 30 for the USAF (and half of THOSE were accounted for by one unit!). The number of misspellings, typos and date errors is relatively minor and NOT distracting from the overall book quality.

Besides well-written complex narratives explaining how tactics and weapons use evolved over time, Rendall emphasizes the importance of human factors in achieving battlefield air superiority. While it's important to have the highest quality aircraft and weapons, it's still - to date, at least - pilot ability and tactical leadership make the ultimate difference. This is most strongly illustrated by Israel's ability on many occasions to establish air superiority - with air-to-air kill ratios of 50-to-1 - even with comparable aircraft and Britain eventually beating back Argentine aircraft that outnumbered them by more than 6-to-1.

One of Rendall's most thoughtful insights is the fundamental advantage of Western culture's celebration of individual excellence, competition and initiative. Non-Western air forces, most significantly the Soviet Union, relied heavily on central ground control of large numbers of aircraft and mediocre pilots rather than letting a small number of superior pilots and air warfare leaders act with individual initiative. Soviet training showed its spectacular weaknesses in the annihilation of its client states' air forces, most notably Egypt, Syria and Iraq.

There's a fascinating description of declining Soviet pilot skill levels during the 1970s-80s due to their leftwing obsession with a form of pilot "affirmative action". Rendall says that to ensure weaker pilots would not be "left behind", and thereby reflect badly on the pilot selection/training establishment, the Soviets systematically reduced pilot training standards. They had many outstanding pilots, but their average pilot skill level steadily declined even as their aircraft performance and weapons quality increased.

At the end of the book I understand how Western - especially American/Anglo - air forces came to dominate their actual and potential adversaries. However the incredible cost of developing and deploying new aircraft is almost beyond the range of even the United States - an F-80 cost $90,000 in 1946 and today's fighters can cost more than $30,000,000! And if the United States ever loses a couple of AWACS at the same time during combat the air battle will quickly descend into total confusion. Finally, Western air forces and other superior military capabilities have driven our adversaries to employ suicide bombers and other asymmetrical tactics not easily countered by conventional forces (Saddam Hussein is probably the only person in the world dumb enough to take on the U.S. armed forces (twice!))

I REALLY enjoyed this book and recommend in the highest possible terms to anyone interested in modern warfare, late-20th Century international conflicts and the history of technological development. Rolling Thunder's weakest point is its unfortunate title, which was the name of an air campaign that, despite pilot skill and gallantry, was notably ineffective while losing and resulted great aircraft and aircrew losses due to strategic, political and leadership flaws at the highest levels of the U.S. military and civilian government.

This single volume history of air combat tactics since the advent of jets in World War II is a very good overview of the topic. The author, an RAF veteran, is conversant with the aircraft and the changes that jet technology caused in the arena of air combat. It is technical without being overly so, and there are excellent accounts of combat action, particularly in the sections on Korea and the Israeli wars. It is an excellent companion volume to Johnny Johnson's "Full Circle," (published around 1965) and Edward H. Sims's "Fighter Tactics and Strategies," (published in 1970), that deal with fighter aircraft combat. Mr. Rendall takes us to the Gulf War. This is the American edition of "Splash One," and has a few distracting typos. What I can't understand is why the publisher chose to use the name of an ill-managed and unsuccessful American bombing campaign in Vietnam as the title! Simply calling it "Jet Combat" would have been much better and far more accurate about the contents.

For me one of the more difficult books to pull off is the general history type book. The reason being is that it is always the case of not being able to please all of the people all of the time. With a general middle of the road type book compromises have to be made and it is the good author that can bridge the gaps that these choices leave. This author tried to give the reader both a general overview of jet fighter development and descriptions of actual jet fighters in combat. Based on what I was looking for the author provided me just the right mix. He was very heavy into descriptions of all major jet fighter combat experiences over the last 60 years and a bit light on the development process.

This authors talents lay with his ability to describe combat. I became more impressed with his writing skill with each new battle he covered. He brought a nice combination of straight shooting facts and the type of drama that is appropriate for a non fiction book. I learned the most from his descriptions of the wars the Israelis have fought and some nice details on both the first Gulf war and the Korean war. My only negative comment on his war coverage was that it was always one sided. Again choices had to be made and I am sure obtaining written accounts of either the Soviet, Arab or Korean battles is not as easy as getting American and British versions. Plus the winners were the versions he used and we all know the winners write the history.

I did not buy the book to get into a deep and well researched account of jet fighter development, and because of this the book gave me just want I was looking for. The author covered the devolvement as a bit of an after thought and you could tell by the writing style that this author was more excited about the combat then the design room. Overall I liked the book. It was easy to read and had a lot of nice detail about many jet fighter combat incidents. If you are looking for a nice overview of jet battles over the past half decade then this book will give you a nice start. If you are after a detailed account of jet development then keep looking, there is just not enough detail of this type to keep you engaged.

For those critical reviewers who nit pick at this book by saying it has technical inaccuries, have missed the point. This isn't supposed to be a reference book with every statistic and nuance of each aircraft. This is an overview of air combat in the jet age.

The author traces air combat from 1916 to the first gulf war. What I liked was the historical review of all of the wars from WW1 - 1991 and also how technology has changed over the years, but the basic concepts of air war created in 1916 have been passed down from generation to generation with little or no change since they are so fundamental.

I found no bias on the part of the author. He gives excellent review of the Falklands war as well as Arab-Isreali conflicts as well as WW1, WW2, Korea,Vietnam, and comments on the future of combat aviation. Also of interest, the use and experiments with drones/unmanned aircraft in the 1970's.

Photos and maps would have been helpful, but again, those are available elsewhere. For a short, thoughtful, readable history of air combat, this is a very good book for all levels of aviation buffs.

I haven't read the book but I probably won't due to the incorrect review. Yes the Me 262 was the first operational jet fighter, the United States could not respond to the 262 with the X-1 because :1.The X-1 was never an operational, mass produced, combat aircraft. 2. The X-1 was rocket powered. The whole book is about Jet Combat, not Rocket Experiments. Maybe exchanging X-1 for XP-59 Airacomet would be more accurate. But still the XP-59 would not be exactly accurate. The P-80 (later changed to F-80) was the first OPERATIONAL jet fighter. [...]

Ivan Rendall is a British television producer and his book is as superficial, incomplete, inaccurate and misleading as his medium. Its real value is as a series of vignettes of various fighter engagements. Do not buy it as a history of "Jet Combat from World War II to the Gulf War." It isn't.

Rendall's work is so USAF-centric, and "pointy-nose" focussed it could have been written by the fighter desk of the USAF's Public Affairs Office. Thoroughly ignored is any aircraft bearing an "A" or "B" prefix even if it is a jet. In addition, aircraft bearing the markings "USN" or "USMC" are only mentioned grudgingly.

As a result a major piece of the history of "jet" combat in Korea is ignored, including the USN's and USMC's vital roles in providing effective close air support to prevent the collapse of the Pusan perimeter. Subsequent historial investigation has revealed USAF close air support to have been ineffective, with North Korea and Chinese survivors going so far as to state that they "feared the blue planes the most." This critical effort is instead coopted to USAF F-84s.

The tremendous contributions of A-4 and A-6 fliers in Vietnam are almost entirely ignored. So too AV-8B, A-7 and A-10 fliers in the Gulf War. To all appearances, only F-100s, F-105s, F-4s, F-111s fought in Vietnam, and F-117s F-15s and F-16s in the Gulf. The crucial role of USN F-8 squadrons in showing the way to the reinstitution of gunfighting and the formation of Top Gun during the lull in the Vietnamese air war is entirely absent. So too is any mention of the F-8's unrivaled kill ratio in that conflict. Instead, Rendall's only nod to the USN is to document Cunningham and Driscoll. One suspects that had they not been the very first aces of that war, they too would have been ignored.

The two Gulf of Sidra incidents, and Operations Eldorado Canyon and Praying Mantis are not even mentioned.

His understanding of electronic warfare and precision munitions is pathetically bad. Once again he is blindly USAF-centric, laboring under the misconception that the E-3 and the E-8 are the sole hubs of the constellation of aircraft involved in electronic missions. His descriptions of precision weapons' guidance are very poor and misleading. His description of Gulf War Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses is particularly bad, and displays an ignorance of the geography, the weapons' capabilities and the techniques employed.

Once again he utterly misses the contribution of the USN, which provided better than half of the SEAD sorties that destroyed Iraq's air defense systems, and misattributes USN SEAD tactics to USAF aircraft.

The proof of the work's superficiality lies in the bibliography, which reads--with few exceptions--like a listing of works on jets which were available at Rendall's corner bookstore. His writing is almost exclusively from secondary sources and "picture books."

If you're interested in Vietnam jet combat, buy Michel's "Clashes," Tillman's "MiG Master," and Nichols and Tillman's "On Yankee Station." The last is listed in Rendall's bibliography, but he appears not to have read it (Cunningham and Driscoll's exploits excepted). For the Gulf War, I recommend Murray's "Air War in the Persian Gulf" and Friedman's "Desert Victory."

I used this book in researching my Air War College paper on Vietnam. It was useful in its description of tactics and the deployment of aircraft. The book's focus is primarily on the application of (jet) air power. It does not dwell on the overarching strategic decisions or the overall campaigns/conflicts. A reader would be well served by having a historical familarity with the conflicts before reading this book - but it isn't essential. It is an enjoyable read with good information and photos. (But, I agree with the earlier reviewer - the name for the book carries some strongly negative connotations - at least in the States.) Try it.

This book could have been a winner, since it's topic is quite interesting. Rendall gives quite a comprehensive overview of the jet age combat, supplemented with action packed combat stories for each era. A promising combination indeed, but only when pulled off correctly.

However, the Rendall's analysis of the facts are weak and offers little, if any, new material or new insights. This is made even worse due to the numerous factual errors regarding equipments and terms. The combat stories are quite lively, but they are also plagued with errors that reduce its value to nothing more than an action story. Furthermore, whoever edited the final manuscript should either get a slap in the head or buy a better spell-checking software (preferably both) for letting so many typos slip beyond his (her?) nose.

Comparison to other books are inevitable. Two books comes to mind. The first is the classic Flight of the Intruder (Coonts). Although it is fiction, its attention to the technical accuracy is much better than this book. The other book is Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam 1965-1972 (Michel). Although much narrower in scope (it only covers the Vietnam War), it offers a much stronger analysis both in technological and political terms. Furthermore, the combat stories contained in Clashes are also both more exciting and much, much more accurate.

I cannot really recommend this book to anyone, except those who can look past the errors.

Good book for the novice. The sections on WWI and WWII are quite enjoyable. However, sections on modern air war have numerous factual errors which tend to destroy the author's credibility.