| Abstract | “The Traumatic Blue Sky: The Psychological Consequences of Aerial Combat in the Twentieth Century” explores the medical problems that the United States’ Army Air Service and Army Air Forces faced in World War I and II. With rapidly changing technology and wartime operations to meet these changes, the air served as a new front of warfare. The aerial realm of combat created unique psychological ailments, like Staleness, Flying Fatigue, and a Lack of Moral Fiber, that affected new and experienced fliers alike. In order to tackle these challenges, medical and administrative personnel turned to contemporary masculine ideals to treat and help fliers overcome the psychologically traumatic experiences of aerial combat. This scholarship argues that the advancing technological nature of warfare, in-sync with changing masculine norms between World War I and World War II, dictated the way that the United States Air Force’s predecessors defined, diagnosed, treated, and regulated psychological problems among American military airmen.
“The Traumatic Blue Sky” ties disparate fields together to break new ground and bring new perspectives to the fields of aerospace history, military history, the history of technology, the history of medicine and disability, and gender studies. As a social and cultural history of war trauma, this dissertation appeals to scholars interested in these various fields as it demonstrates that gender has a consequential impact on how a person experiences life. Moreover, gender plays an extremely influential, and sometimes deciding, role in shaping how military personnel experience wartime service and the psychological legacies of combat, for better and for worse. Overall, by shedding light on the consequences of aerial combat on the human psyche from World War I to World War II, this project seeks to restore the human costs of air power in wartime. |
