Biplanes and Bombsights: British Bombing in World War I
Biplanes and Bombsights: British Bombing in World War I

Author: George K. Williams

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 178625025X

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This study measures wartime claims against actual results of the British bombing campaign against Germany in the Great War. Components of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), and the Royal Air Force (RAF) conducted bombing raids between July 1916 and the Armistice. Specifically, Number 3 Wing (RNAS), 41 Wing of Eighth Brigade (RFC), and the Independent Force (IF) bombed German targets from bases in France. Lessons supposedly gleaned from these campaigns heavily influenced British military aviation, underpinning RAF doctrine up to and into the Second World War. Fundamental discrepancies exist, however, between the official verdict and the first-hand evidence of bombing results gathered by intelligence teams of the RAF and the US Air Service. Results of the British bombing efforts were demonstrably more modest, and costs in casualties and wastage far steeper, than previously acknowledged. A preoccupation with “moral effect” came to dominate the British view of their aerial offensives. Maj Gen Hugh M. Trenchard played a pivotal role in bringing this misperception to the forefront of public consciousness. After the Armistice, the potential of strategic bombing was officially extolled to justify the RAF as an independent service. The Air Ministry’s final report must be evaluated as a partisan manifestation of this crusade and not as a definitive final assessment, as it has been mistakenly accepted previously. This study develops and substantiates a comprehensive evaluation of British long-range bombing in the First World War. Its findings run directly counter to the generally held opinion. Natural limitations, technical shortfalls, and aircrews lacking proficiency acted in concert with German defenses to produce far less results than those claimed.

Taking Flight
Taking Flight

Author: Richard P. Hallion

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-05-08

Total Pages: 655

ISBN-13: 0190289597

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The invention of flight represents the culmination of centuries of thought and desire. Kites and rockets sparked our collective imagination. Then the balloon gave humanity its first experience aloft, though at the mercy of the winds. The steerable airship that followed had more practicality, yet a number of insurmountable limitations. But the airplane truly launched the Aerial Age, and its subsequent impact--from the vantage of a century after the Wright Brother's historic flight on December 17, 1903--has been extraordinary. Richard Hallion, a distinguished international authority on aviation, offers a bold new examination of aircraft history, stressing its global roots. The result is an interpretive history of uncommon sweep, complexity, and warmth. Taking care to place each technological advance in the context of its own period as well as that of the evolving era of air travel, this ground-breaking work follows the pre-history of flight, the work of balloon and airship advocates, fruitless early attempts to invent the airplane, the Wright brothers and other pioneers, the impact of air power on the outcome of World War I, and finally the transfer of prophecy into practice as flight came to play an ever-more important role in world affairs, both military and civil. Making extensive use of extracts from the journals, diaries, and memoirs of the pioneers themselves, and interspersing them with a wide range or rare photographs and drawings, Taking Flight leads readers to the laboratories and airfields where aircraft were conceived and tested. Forcefully yet gracefully written in rich detail and with thorough documentation, this book is certain to be the standard reference for years to come on how humanity came to take to the sky, and what the Aerial Age has meant to the world since da Vinci's first fantastical designs.

The Royal Flying Corps, the Western Front and the Control of the Air, 1914–1918
The Royal Flying Corps, the Western Front and the Control of the Air, 1914–1918

Author: James Pugh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-12

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1317016890

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By the middle of 1918 the British Army had successfully mastered the concept of ’all arms’ warfare on the Western Front. This doctrine, integrating infantry, artillery, armoured vehicles and - crucially - air power, was to prove highly effective and formed the basis of major military operations for the next hundred years. Yet, whilst much has been written on the utilisation of ground forces, the air element still tends to be studied in isolation from the army as a whole. In order to move beyond the usual 'aircraft and aces' approach, this book explores the conceptual origins of the control of the air and the role of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) within the British army. In so doing it addresses four key themes. First, it explores and defines the most fundamental air power concept - the control of the air - by examining its conceptual origins before and during the First World War. Second, it moves beyond the popular history of air power during the First World War to reveal the complexity of the topic. Third, it reintegrates the study of air power during the First World War, specifically that of the RFC, into the strategic, operational, organisational, and intellectual contexts of the era, as well as embedding the study within the respective scholarly literatures of these contexts. Fourth, the book reinvigorates an entrenched historiography by challenging the usually critical interpretation of the RFC’s approach to the control of the air, providing new perspectives on air power during the First World War. This includes an exploration of the creation of the RAF and its impact on the development of air power concepts.

Targeting the Third Reich
Targeting the Third Reich

Author: Robert S. Ehlers, Jr.

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2015-04-15

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 070062144X

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When large formations of Allied four-engine bombers finally flew over Europe, it marked the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. Their relentless hammering of Germany-totaling more than 1.4 million missions-took out oil refineries, industries, and transportation infrastructures vital to the Reich's war effort. While other accounts have focused on operational details, this is the first book to reveal the crucial role of air intelligence in these dramatic campaigns. Robert Ehlers reexamines these bombings through the lens of both air intelligence and operations, a dual approach that shows how the former was so vital to the latter's success. Air intelligence was essential to both targeting and damage assessment, and by demonstrating its contributions to the Combined Bomber Offensive of 1943-1945, Ehlers provides a wealth of new insight into the war. Ehlers describes the close ties that developed between the Royal Air Force's "precision intelligence" arm and the U.S. Army Air Force's "precision bombardment" forces, telling how the RAF's photographic reconnaissance and signals intelligence steered both British and American bombers to the right targets at the right intervals with the right munitions. He shows that the greatest strength of this partnership was its ability to orchestrate all aspects of damage assessment within an effective organizational structure, so that by 1944 senior air commanders-like the RAF's Arthur "Bomber" Harris and the AAF's Carl "Tooey" Spaatz-could gauge the accuracy of bombing with a high degree of precision, analyze its effects on the German war effort, and determine its effectiveness in helping the Allies achieve strategic objectives. Ehlers focuses on three key offensives in 1944-against French and Belgian rail supply lines delivering German troops and supplies to Normandy, against German oil refineries, and against railroads and waterways inside the Reich-that had a disastrous effect on the Nazi war effort. In the process, he underscores the degree to which bombers constituted part of a highly effective combined-arms force, giving Allied armies crucial advantages on the battlefield. Drawing on a huge collection of bomb-damage assessment photographs and a wealth of other archival sources, he shows that the success of these and other efforts can be traced directly to the success of air intelligence. Providing a deeper and more accurate understanding of the bomber campaigns' role in the Allied victory, Ehlers's study testifies to the strategic importance of these efforts in that war and provides a tool for understanding the importance of intelligence operations in future conflicts.

Biplanes and Bombsights
Biplanes and Bombsights

Author: George K. Williams

Publisher:

Published: 2002-06-01

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9781410200129

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Colonel Williams presents a comprehensive study of British bombing efforts in the Great War. He contends that the official version of costs and results underplays the costs while overplaying the results. Supported by postwar findings of both US and British evaluation teams, he argues that British bombing efforts were significantly less effective than heretofore believed.Colonel Williams also presents a strong argument that German air defenses caused considerably less damage to British forces than pilot error, malfunctioning aircraft, and bad weather. That we believed otherwise supports the notion that British bombing raids had forced Germany to transfer significant air assets to defend against them. Williams, however, found no evidence that any such transfer occurred. Actual results, Colonel Williams argues, stand in strong contrast to claimed results.

Bombing the People
Bombing the People

Author: Thomas Hippler

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-08-29

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1107292638

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Giulio Douhet is generally considered the world's most important air-power theorist and this book offers the first comprehensive account of his air-power concepts. It ranges from 1884 when an air service was first implemented within the Italian military to the outbreak of the Second World War, and explores the evolution and dissemination of Douhet's ideas in an international context. It examines the impact of the Libyan war, the First World War and Ethiopian war on the development of Italian air-power strategy. It also addresses the issue of Douhet's advocacy of strategic bombing, exploring why it was that Douhet became an advocate of city bombing; the meaning and the limits of his core concept of 'command of the air'; and the mutual impact of air power, military and naval thought. It also takes into account alternatives to Douhetism such as the theories developed by Amedeo Mecozzi and others.

The American Way of Bombing
The American Way of Bombing

Author: Matthew Evangelista

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-08-21

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0801454565

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Aerial bombardment remains important to military strategy, but the norms governing bombing and the harm it imposes on civilians have evolved. The past century has seen everything from deliberate attacks against rebellious villagers by Italian and British colonial forces in the Middle East to scrupulous efforts to avoid "collateral damage" in the counterinsurgency and antiterrorist wars of today. The American Way of Bombing brings together prominent military historians, practitioners, civilian and military legal experts, political scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists to explore the evolution of ethical and legal norms governing air warfare. Focusing primarily on the United States—as the world’s preeminent military power and the one most frequently engaged in air warfare, its practice has influenced normative change in this domain, and will continue to do so—the authors address such topics as firebombing of cities during World War II; the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the deployment of airpower in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya; and the use of unmanned drones for surveillance and attacks on suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and elsewhere.

The Birth of British Airpower
The Birth of British Airpower

Author: Peter John Dye

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2024-10-15

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1682478637

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The Birth of British Airpower describes how Hugh Trenchard, a man with few leadership skills, became a much-loved and inspirational commander who laid the foundation for British airpower on the Western Front in World War I and created the preconditions for the establishment of the world’s first independent air service, the Royal Air Force. Author Peter Dye explores how friendship can overcome significant personal and character deficiencies and how, by assembling the right senior leadership team, Trenchard achieved greatness. The book also examines how the development of airpower doctrine in World War I owed as much to chance as to careful planning and how air superiority was achieved only through sustained effort, underpinned by an effective and responsive logistic system. Finally, it explains how the ethos of the postwar air force was built around these experiences and the collective effort of all those involved in the air war.

The Next War in the Air
The Next War in the Air

Author: Brett Holman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-17

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1317022629

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In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.