Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and Glossary
- 1 The Anglo-American Relationship and the Need for Historical Interpretation
- 2 The Evolution of Transatlantic Aircraft Supply Diplomacy, 1938–40
- 3 The Diplomacy of Critical Dependency, 1940
- 4 Lend-Lease and the Politics of Supply, 1941
- 5 The Limits of Dependency: American Aircraft in Action, 1940–2
- 6 Heavy Bomber Supply Diplomacy, 1941–2
- 7 The Problem of Quality: the Fighter Supply Crisis of 1942
- 8 Collaboration and Interdependency
- Appendix RAF Air Strength by aircraft type on 3 September 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1942
- Unpublished Sources Cited in Text
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Collaboration and Interdependency
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and Glossary
- 1 The Anglo-American Relationship and the Need for Historical Interpretation
- 2 The Evolution of Transatlantic Aircraft Supply Diplomacy, 1938–40
- 3 The Diplomacy of Critical Dependency, 1940
- 4 Lend-Lease and the Politics of Supply, 1941
- 5 The Limits of Dependency: American Aircraft in Action, 1940–2
- 6 Heavy Bomber Supply Diplomacy, 1941–2
- 7 The Problem of Quality: the Fighter Supply Crisis of 1942
- 8 Collaboration and Interdependency
- Appendix RAF Air Strength by aircraft type on 3 September 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1942
- Unpublished Sources Cited in Text
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We propose to consider first the single elements of our subject, then each branch or part, and, last of all, the whole, in all its relations – therefore to advance from the simple to the complex.
Carl von ClausewitzThe seminal military theorist Clausewitz wrote before the evolution of air power and did not pay much attention to the dynamics of the kinds of economic and maritime war traditionally waged by the British state in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that were echoed in the maritime blockade and peripheral campaigns of World War II. Nonetheless, some of his ideas can be successfully applied to the British experience in that conflict. This narrative has used a series of case studies to provide a more general reappraisal of the Anglo-American aircraft supply relationship in the first half of World War II. All these case studies have identified factors operating to constrain the value of American aircraft supply. These constraints operated in the classical sense of Clausewitzian ‘friction’, or the accumulation of difficulties and circumstances that cause disappointment in any endeavour.
The result of this friction was that American aircraft supply in 1940–2 fell short of the assertions associated with it at the time. Furthermore, subsequent historical accounts failed to recognise fully this friction and have perpetuated misperceptions concerning the importance of American aircraft supply to Britain.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Arsenal of DemocracyAircraft Supply and the Anglo-American Alliance, 1938-1942, pp. 238 - 277Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013