The Air Force and the National Guided Missile Program 1944-1950

At the end of World War Two, it was accepted that guided missiles would dominate future warfare. Yet, despite this conviction, nobody really knew how such weapons would be used, who would develop them or who would deploy and use them in combat operations. As the post-war armed forces started to design these new weapons, they were truly entering unknown territory.

This monograph takes us back to the days when these weapons were still in the earliest of conceptual stages. Even the very nature of a guided missile still had to be properly defined. As the fundamental issues involved in developing the new missiles were addressed, funding shortages and the developing political environment added difficulties of their own.

Today, we find the idea of waging war without access to an arsenal of guided missiles and other precision-guided munitions quite unimaginable. The Air Force and The National Guided Missile Program 1944-1950 provides an invaluable insight of the era that gave birth to the modern art of war.