Robert F. Dorr
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Robert F. Dorr (born September 11, 1939) is an author and retired American diplomat who has authored 70 books and numerous articles on international affairs, military issues and the Vietnam War. He writes the weekly "Back Talk" opinion column for the Air Force Times newspaper and the monthly "Washington Watch" feature of Aerospace America. He is also the technical editor of Air Power History [1] and was Washington correspondent for the discontinued World Air Power Journal.
Biography
Dorr served in the United States Air Force in Korea (1957-60) and spent 24 years as a Foreign Service Officer (1964-89) with the U.S. State Department. He held senior positions in Washington after tours of duty in Tananarive, Madagascar; Seoul, Korea; Fukuoka, Japan; Monrovia, Liberia; Stockholm, Sweden; and London, England.
Dorr published his first magazine article in 1955 (age 16) and is best known for magazine and newspaper work. In 1978, he received a non-fiction award from the now-defunct Aviation/Space Writers Association. He regularly contributes articles to Air Forces Monthly, Air & Space/Smithsonian, and Flight Journal. His weekly opinion column in the trade journal Air Force Times is read by about 100,000 current, former and retired military members and their families. Between 2000 and 2009, he wrote four weekly history columns a week for the Military Times newspapers. Mr. Dorr's opinion columns indicate strong support for the military and reflect a liberal political point of view. In a September 10, 2007 column that was widely reprinted around the United States, he called for an end to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and for treating war prisoners openly under the 1949 Geneva Convention. Before U.S. law changed to permit it, Dorr called for the military to allow homosexuals to openly serve. In other columns he has urged veterans service organizations to get up to date to attract younger veterans and has written about what he calls the dismantling of the Air Force in an era of tight budgets.
Dorr is an observer of events in North Korea. Service academies, universities and Veteran's groups have used his speeches and writings on foreign affairs and Air Force history. Dorr has been interviewed on several networks, including C-SPAN, the Discovery Channel, CNN and local Washington-area newscasts. In 2010, he was given an Achievement Award by the Air Force Historical Foundation for his work for the foundation and its magazine, Air Power History.
New projects
Dorr's book "Mission to Berlin," about the Eighth Air Force raid of February 3. 1945 over Europe in World War II, was published May 1, 2011. This is primarily a history of B-17 Flying Fortress crews in one of the largest air battles of the war but it also covers Americans who flew and maintained the B-24 Liberator, P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang. <ref.>
Dorr and former astronaut Tom Jones published in 2008 a wartime history of the 365th Fighter Group, "Hell Hawks." This is a history of an aerial band of brothers who went ashore at Normandy just after the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion, fought on the continent through the Battle of the Bulge, and were still in action when Germany surrendered. These American airmen lived under crude conditions, were subject to harsh weather and frequent enemy attacks as they moved from one airbase to another, accompanying the Allied advance toward Germany. To tell their story, Dorr and Jones interviewed 183 surviving veterans who supported, maintained, and piloted the group's P-47 Thunderbolt fighters. "Hell Hawks" is in its ninth printing with almost 30,000 copies in print. Referring to "Hell Hawks," Walter J. Boyne, former director of the National Air and Space Museum and member of the National Aviation Hall of Fame, wrote, "Hell Hawks sets a new standard for histories of the tactical air war in Europe. Veteran authors Bob Dorr and Tom Jones combine masterfully crafted veteran interviews with the broader picture of the air war fought by the Thunderbolt men." The Experimental Aircraft Associations Warbirds magazine (July 2008) wrote, "Hell Hawks is a Stephen Ambrose-style history of a 'band of brothers' with airplanes."
Published books
A partial listing of books authored or co-authored include:
- Air Combat: An Oral History of Fighter Pilots (2007) ISBN 0425211703
- Air Force One (2002) ISBN 0760310556
- Air War Hanoi (1988) ISBN 0713717831
- Air War: South Vietnam (1991) ISBN 1854090011
- B-24 Liberator Units of the Eighth Air Force (1999) ISBN 1855329018
- B-24 Liberator Units of the Fifteenth Air Force (2000) ISBN 1841760811
- B-24 Liberator Units of the Pacific War (1999) ISBN 1855327813
- B-29 Superfortress Units of the Korean War (2003) ISBN 1841766542
- B-29 Superfortress Units of World War II (2002) ISBN 1841762857
- B-52 Stratofortress : Boeing's Cold War warrior ISBN 1841760978
- Chopper: A History of America Military Helicopter Operations from WWII to the War on Terror (2005) ISBN 0425202739
- Desert Shield : the build-up, the complete story (1991) ISBN 0879385065
- Hell Hawks! The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht (2008) with Tom Jones. ISBN 0760329184. Zenith Press.
- Korean War Aces (1995) ISBN 1855325012
- McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II" (1988) ISBN 0850455871
- Marine Air: The History of the Flying Leathernecks in Words and Photos (2007) ISBN 0425213641
- "Mission to Berlin" (2011) ISBN 9780760338988
- U.S. Marines: The People and Equipment Behind America's First Military Response (2006) ISBN 1592236189
References
External links
- Air Force Times article "Vietnam era's Dragonfly a ground-support warrior" January 13, 2003
- Osprey Publishing, Robert F Dorr
- ^ Masthead, Air Power History, The Journal of the Air Force Historical Foundation, Potomac, Maryland, Fall 2009, Volume 56, Number 3, page 2.