Hap Arnold and the Evolution of American Airpower

Taught to fly by the Wright Brothers, appointed the first and only five-star general of the Air Force, and remembered as the man who won World War II’s air war, Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold is one of the most significant figures in American aviation history. From 1938 to 1946, as the first Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces—the largest, most powerful air armada that has ever been assembled—Arnold fought World War II not in the field but in Congress, on the Army General Staff, in factories, and in universities. His vision of airpower as more than just sophisticated aircraft not only established US air supremacy during the war but also laid the foundations for the technology, infrastructure, and philosophy of today's air force.

In the thoroughly detailed Hap Arnold and the Evolution of American Airpower, biographer Dik Alan Daso draws on Arnold’s personal papers and declassified documents to sketch out the adventurous career, dynamic personality, and bold vision of the “father of the Air Force.” Daso traces a career centered around the airplane, the technological achievement that revolutionized twenieth-century warfare.

Describing the technology, institutions, and individuals—from the Wright Brothers to the president of Caltech—that influenced Arnold's decisions as a general, Daso shows how the peacetime experiences of World War II's foremost military airman shaped the evolution of American military aviation as a whole.Winner of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics History Manuscript Award
“[U]ntil now [Hap Arnold] hasn’t been blessed with a serious biography. Dik Daso, one of a handful of fighter pilots to earn a Ph.D. in history, fills the gap, and in the process uses Arnold’s life as a metaphor for the development of US air power in the first half of the twentieth-century. . . . [Arnold] was a consummate politician . . . [and a] strategist, one who almost single-handedly built up the US Army Air Forces and gave it a distinct mission.”—Air & SpaceDik Alan Daso is a US Air Force pilot and the author of Architects of American Air Supremacy: General Hap Arnold and Dr. Theodore von Kármán.Biographer Dik Daso traces the career and peacetime experiences of World War II's foremost military airman, first Commanding General Hap Arnold.