Robert F. Dorr (born September 11, 1939) is an author and retired senior 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 and was Washington correspondent for the discontinued World Air Power Journal.
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. He regularly contributes articles to Air Forces Monthly, Air and 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. He also writes four weekly history columns a week for the Military Times newspapers. His opinion column typically displays 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.
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, and local Washington-area newscasts.
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.
Dorr's book "Mission to Berlin," about the 8th Air Force raid of 3 February 1945 over Europe in World War II, will be published by Zenith Press in March 2011.
