{"product_id":"air-power-for-peace-eugene-e-wilson-signed-copy-from-lord-portal-s-private-collection","title":"Air Power for Peace - Eugene E. Wilson, Signed Copy from Lord Portal’s Private Collection","description":"\u003cp data-start=\"166\" data-end=\"282\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-start=\"166\" data-end=\"282\"\u003eWILSON, Eugene E. Air Power for Peace. New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1945.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"284\" data-end=\"678\"\u003eFirst edition, first impression. Octavo, publisher’s burgundy cloth, silver spine lettering and silver aircraft vignette to upper board, vii, 184 pp., diagrams. Signed by \u003cstrong\u003eEugene E. Wilson\u003c\/strong\u003e on the front free endpaper, \u003cstrong\u003e“Washington, April 45.”\u003c\/strong\u003e From the private collection of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Portal of Hungerford. Light rubbing and minor wear to extremities, internally clean, a strong aviation association copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"680\" data-end=\"1167\"\u003eWilson was one of the significant American air-power advocates of the first half of the twentieth century: a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, naval engineer, First World War veteran, Bureau of Aeronautics officer, later aviation industrialist, and president of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America. In \u003cem data-start=\"989\" data-end=\"1010\"\u003eAir Power for Peace\u003c\/em\u003e, written as victory approached, he argued for aviation not merely as a weapon of war but as a framework for post-war security, commerce and national policy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1169\" data-end=\"1519\"\u003eLord Portal was Wilson’s British counterpart at the highest strategic level: a decorated First World War flyer, commander of RAF Bomber Command in 1940, and Chief of the Air Staff from October 1940 through the end of the war. Portal helped shape the Allied strategic bombing offensive and became one of the central architects of British air strategy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1521\" data-end=\"2012\"\u003eThe link between them is intellectual and historical rather than merely personal: Wilson wrote the American case for air power as the basis of peace, while Portal had just directed Britain’s air war at the highest level. A signed Washington copy, dated April 1945 and preserved in Portal’s library, is therefore a resonant transatlantic association - American aviation policy placed in the hands of Britain’s wartime RAF chief at the moment air power was being recast for the post-war world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WILSON, Eugene E","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53096074838283,"sku":null,"price":350.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0794\/7848\/9355\/files\/20260430_080340055_iOS.jpg?v=1778083296","url":"https:\/\/www.archbooks.co.uk\/products\/air-power-for-peace-eugene-e-wilson-signed-copy-from-lord-portal-s-private-collection","provider":"Arch Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}