Philip Clayton Shackelford, "Rise of the Mavericks: The U.S. Air Force Security Service and the Cold War" (US Naval Institute Press, 2023)

New Books in American Studies · May 12, 2023 · 46m

The U.S. Air Force had to struggle to establish itself as an independent branch of the American military, and originally was an extension of the Army. The experiences during World War II (1939-1945) and the beginning of the Cold War afterwards helped propel the process towards becoming a separate branch in 1948. An important but less studied aspect of this process was the necessity for the Air Force to have its own special intelligence branch, which would later become the Security Service. Undertaking painstaking operations to decipher enemy communications and intentions, the Security Service…