Defending the West: The United States Air Force and European Security, 1946-1998

The United States Army Air Forces became an independent service, the United States Air Force, in 1947-the second year, supposedly, of "peace." In reality there had just begun a long conflict between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and the satellite states subject to it. In 1949 the United States and most of the non-Communist countries of Europe signed the North Atlantic Treaty. The United States Air Force, which had been only a token presence on the continent since the...