Dr. Mark Clodfelter, National War College
Dr. Mark Clodfelter is a Professor of Military Strategy at the National War College in Washington, DC. A former U.S. Air Force officer, he served in radar assignments in South Carolina and Korea during a 23-year Air Force career devoted largely to teaching. He twice taught history at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and ultimately served as the Academy’s director of military history. From 1991-1994, he taught at Air University’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS). He next became Professor of Aerospace Studies and Commander of the Air Force ROTC detachment at the University of North Carolina. He began teaching at the National War College in 1997, first in uniform, and since 2000 as a civilian professor. Mark has published extensively on air power topics. He has won several writing awards, and many of his publications are used as readings in professional military education courses in the US and in NATO countries. He is the author of The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (Free Press, 1989), which U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Ronald Fogleman selected for the Chief’s intermediate reading list in 1996. The RAF Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, placed the paperback edition of the book on his “top ten” reading list in 2007. Mark has recently published Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917-1945 (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), a book analyzing how progressive ideals influenced the American approach to strategic bombing before and during World War II, and why progressive air power notions have endured to the present in the U.S. Air Force. He has a BS in European History from the U.S. Air Force Academy (1977), an MA in Military History from the University of Nebraska (1983), and a PhD in American History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1987). He is a die-hard fan of North Carolina basketball, Air Force Academy football, and St. Louis Cardinals baseball.
