Since the introduction of aircraft to warfare, ground commanders have seen them as a powerful addition to their plans for dislodging and pursuing an enemy or for defending against assaults on friendly positions. For military aviators, battlefield support is one of a range of possible uses of aircraft in attacking hostile forces. Often, more profitable targets are in the enemy's war industries or in the opposing army's rear areas, where supplies and units are exposed on transportation nets leading to a fighting front. This book examines the development of various doctrines on the application of aviation against battlefield targets. Written by several well-known military and aviation historians, these analytical essays present examples of close air-support experience from World War I to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin Cooling served as the Air Force project coordinator and general editor for this volume. He received his doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Pennsylvania and began a career as a historian in the 1960s. He has served in various research and supervisory positions with the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the U.S. Army Military History Institute, and the Office of Air Force History. An authority on the history of the American Civil War, Dr. Cooling has published widely on military and naval topics of that era. He has been executive director of the American Military Institute, a research fellow at the Naval War College, and a lecturer in military history at the U.S. Army War College. In 1989, Dr. Cooling became Chief Historian of the Department of Energy.