Review of Operations Analysis in 8th Air Force

After the horrors of trench warfare in World War One, American airmen developed theories of strategic bombing as a use of airpower to decisively win future wars.[2] When their theories of strategic bombing met the reality of World War Two, however, the airmen encountered serious difficulties requiring a blend of warfighters and scientists to resolve. In Operations Analysis in the United States Army Eighth Air Force in World War II, Charles W. McArthur tells the story of analysts using scientific methods and working side-by-side with military members to improve strategic bombing. McArthur is intimately familiar with strategic bombing, having served as a bombardier in the 493rd Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force. After the war, he pursued a career as a mathematician and found some of his colleagues and teachers served in World War Two in a different capacity, as operations analysts. As McArthur says in his introduction, he sought “to document the important role played by civilian analysts in operations research in the United States Eighth Air Force in World War II, especially the mathematicians.”[3]