Striving for Air Superiority: The Tactical Air Command in Vietnam by Craig C. Hannah. Texas A&M University Press (http://www.tamu.edu/ upress), John H. Lindsey Building, Lewis Street, 4354 TAMU, College Station, Texas 77843, 2002, 176 pages, $29.95.

This book is both enlightening and disappointing. Beginning with the former, Hannah’s thesis is that during the first two decades of the nuclear era, Tactical Air Command (TAC) failed to concentrate on the missions specified for it by the War Department in 1946. The reason was an "identity crisis" brought about by the dominance of nuclear deterrence in national security policy that led TAC to become a mini-Strategic Air Command in order to survive. Although this is not a new theme, Hannah gives the problem a sharper focus by concentrating only on TAC’s traditional air-superiority mission.

Hannah demonstrates that after the F-86 Sabre jet, which had been so successful in Korea, subsequent "fighters" were designed as long-range interceptors to shoot down Soviet nuclear bombers at long range with radar-guided or heat-seeking missiles. Or they were designed as fighter-bombers (more accurately called bomber-fighters) whose primary capability was delivering nuclear ordnance. He effectively shows, even to the novice, that the design requirements for interceptors, "bomber-fighters," and air-superiority fighters are very dissimilar. As a result, the United States entered the struggle in Vietnam ill equipped to handle challenges from a small North Vietnamese air force equipped with outdated air-superiority fighters- but fighters nonetheless.

Hannah also effectively demonstrates that because TAC concentrated on its twin nuclear missions (long-range bomber interception and nuclear-weapons delivery), there was very limited training in air-to-air combat. Not only was there not much training in these kinds of turning engagements, when training did occur, it was against similar aircraft flown by US pilots using US tactics. Dissimilar air combat training (DACT) was not used until after the Vietnam War.

Observations about aircraft-design parameters and pilot-training missions would normally make for very dry reading. Much to his credit, Hannah brings the subjects to life with well-chosen vignettes from Vietnam combat veterans that aptly illustrate his points. This makes for a "good read."

Turning to the disappointments in the book, readers’ misgivings will begin with the title. TAC was not in Vietnam. TAC was stateside, in the business of structuring, training, and equipping the forces that it supplied to combatant commands, such as Pacific Air Forces in the case of the conflict in Vietnam. Admittedly, this is a minor gaff but a gaff nonetheless- and one not likely to favorably impress the knowledgeable reader.

Much more important are two fundamental flaws in the book. The first is that Hannah seems unsure of the audience for whom he writes. At times he appears to be writing for the novice, as in chapter two when he spells out some of the most basic principles of aerospace engineering as a prelude to explaining why interceptors, bombers, and fighters require dissimilar designs. However, he quickly lapses into three pages of complex mathematical formulae (Hannah has a degree in aeronautical engineering) that are not needed to make his points and are meaningful only to readers with Hannah’s mathematical background. Strangely, in this same chapter, he fails to explain the importance of wing loading but in later chapters talks about it as if readers were thoroughly familiar with the subject.

The second fundamental flaw is found in what Hannah doesn’t do. He does not even try to explain why virtually the entire national security apparatus developed nuclear myopia in the 1950s and 1960s. The reader is left with the impression that reckless decisions by cost-cutting politicians and Air Force bomber barons were the root of the problem. Of course, the truth is that the post–Korean War force-structure decisions were reckless only in hindsight. The idea that the threat of US nuclear weapons could deter most wars and quickly end wars not deterred permeated most of the defense establishment- civilian and military. Nuclear weapons were quite reasonably seen at that time as the basis for a "revolution in military affairs" that would make conventional military forces obsolete. Everyone wanted to get into the nuclear business- the Navy with its carrier airpower and submarines, the Army with its missiles and an "atomic cannon," and, of course, Tactical Air Command.

It seems to this reviewer that when Hannah fails to address the "why" of America’s nuclear myopia, he has ignored at least half of the story- perhaps the more important half. What is left is a short but very enlightening thesis outlining design differences among different types of aircraft and illustrated with some very interesting vignettes about how difficult it was to seize control of the air over North Vietnam with the wrong kind of aircraft.

Col Dennis M. Drew, USAF, Retired
Maxwell AFB, Alabama