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Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
Published: 1 December 2008
Air & Space Power Journal - Winter 2008
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Prelaunch Notes |
Lt Col Paul D. Berg, USAF, Chief, Professional Journals
Maj Gen I. B. Holley has announced his retirement from Air and Space Power Journal’s (ASPJ) Editorial Advisory Board (EAB—its board of directors, charged with determining the Journal’s strategic direction). A military-history icon, he has been associated with ASPJ for over three decades—actually only a small part of his amazing military and academic career. After enlisting in the Army Air Forces and serving as an aerial-gunnery instructor during World War II, he joined the Air Force Reserve in 1947. In the military, he served in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, at the Keesler Technical Training Center in Mississippi, and at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, as mobilization designee to the commander of Air University. By 1976 his talents had taken him to the rank of major general; he retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1981. Meanwhile, for over 60 years he has enjoyed a parallel career as a professor at Duke University, teaching a number of subjects, including military history and the history of technology.
General Holley is renowned for his keen insights into how thought affects military organizations and the conduct of war. His landmark book Ideas and Weapons, published in 1953, analyzes the evolution of weaponry between World War I and World War II, notably in terms of the influence of doctrine upon airpower development. He has published other books and innumerable articles, some of which have appeared in ASPJ (formerly known as Air University Quarterly Review, Air University Review, Airpower Journal, and Aerospace Power Journal). The Air Force Historical Foundation recently honored him by establishing the Major General I. B. Holley Award to honor scholars who have made “a sustained, significant contribution to the documentation of Air Force history during a lifetime of service.” The inaugural award went to General Holley for his “decades of assistance, support and encouragement to military historians.”*
Nobody will ever fully comprehend all the ways that General Holley has contributed to ASPJ, but his pervasive influence is ingrained in the Journal’s DNA. I first met General Holley over 10 years ago, when he taught a short course on research and writing at Air University. His crisp, no-nonsense, highly demanding teaching style left a lasting impression. Since then, I have hosted him at EAB meetings, during which I have done my best to profit from his wisdom. He periodically sends notes to the ASPJ staff, offering witty advice and constructive criticism. Fellow EAB member Dr. Dave Mets has known General Holley much longer, having met him at the Air Force Academy in the 1960s. Dr. Mets served with General Holley on the West Point faculty in the early 1970s, benefited from his mentoring during Dr. Mets’s tenure as editor of Air University Review in the late 1970s, and again while assigned as a professor at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell in the 1990s. Dr. Mets told me that General Holley “has ever been an inspiration as well as perhaps my greatest teacher, but most of all a dear friend. He has been a stalwart pillar supporting this journal and the Air Force as long as both have existed.”
On behalf of the ASPJ staff, past and present, I thank General Holley for his many years of dedication to the Journal’s ongoing mission.
*“Major General I. B. Holley Award,” Air Force Historical Foundation, 2008, http://www.afhistoricalfoundation. org/awards/Major_General_I_B_Holley_Award.asp.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University
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