Some thoughts: First, I love the title. It does a great job of highlighting the disconnect between what airmen wanted to do and what they could do. But in my latest skimming of the entire book after reading it many times I'm not as happy with it. @richganske @TurnerJobie https://twitter.com/ACSC_Airpower/status/1283828511569043456

First, I get the sense that students often miss what is the actual argument of the book: "A body of ideas about long-range aerial bombing began to take shape, based on assumptions about and perceptions of the behavior of modern societies. I argue that these helped determine how

the WWI experience of bombing was interpreted and, in turn, affected subsequent thinking and planning." (7) Biddle insists that others have neglected this, but she does not point out a single scholar who has done this or provide an endnote. She then continues with her argument...

WWI "played important role in determining what came afterward." (7) This is a very vague argument. Sure, ok, it was important. But why? How important of a role? More important than the interwar period, for ex? It's not much of an argument to just say that something is important

She also borrows from cognitive psychology to explain why airmen failed to prepare properly to actually carry out strategic bombardment. For ex, we get overwhelmed by info so we tend to pick and choose data points that agree with what we already think

I think this is a great framework to turn on ourselves today and think about our own preferences and confirmation bias. But the framework doesn't quite work for me because the author doesn't reconcile how important this is in terms of the competing reasons decisions were made

At some points, culture is seen as influencing actions & ideas. At others it is pragmatic institutional self-interest. All of these things can be at work at once, but it seems to me that the author then must show more causality for one's self-proclaimed chosen framework

What I think Biddle's argument really is: the two most critical ideas about strategic bombardment grew out of WWI: the "theory of the offensive" and the "moral effect" of bombing (69). But does the reigning theory of the offensive come out of cognitive psych framework or

European military culture or something else, like context of the world wars? Because that matters for how she chose to frame her argument. And it's also interesting that her book is really a comparative history of Army Air Forces & RAF. Maybe that is the real historiographical

intervention she's making. In which case, did WWI play the pivotal role in shaping future Army Air Forces thinking? Maybe a better argument would hone in on differences and similarities in & experiences for the overarching experience.

Can one even argue that WWI was more critical, for ex, than the Air Corps Tactical School's inter-war thinking, teaching, and experimentation? I don't know that it necessarily matters which one was more important, and that's why I keep going back to her original argument.

The focus on WWII similarly continues contrast between & while really pushing the rhetoric & reality theme, which I find useful. But it also means that much of the emphasis on WWI importance (again, the main argument) is lost. We also see continuing themes of inst self

interest. And Biddle highlights adaptation and innovation over the course of Combined Bomber Offensive. But what enabled certain airmen to escape cognitive dissonance sooner than others? One would think a book using a frame of cognitive psych would do that

Biddle returns to the two ideas in her conclusion re inability of civilians to resist aerial bombardment and also assumption of complexity of societies thus further making them vulnerable to bombers (289). But then why was WWI so important? As she points out herself,

politicians and authors (HG Wells) had already envisioned and discussed some of these assumptions as early as 1908 (13). Again, this goes back to my repeating point: maybe it's culture, then, not cognitive psych that offers a better framework.

So those are my thoughts on what I find to be competing arguments that I think are difficult to reconcile. Still, this is a great comparative history of a big chunk of airpower history. And this is what happens to nerds when they've read a book too many times ;)