World
War One
World War One saw the
emergence of air power in the military field - initially as 'spotter'
planes, then as fighters and finally bombers. The Zeppelins
were used as 'strategic' bombers in 1915, and extended fighting
to the Home Front for the first time. As speed and endurance increased,
civilians became more and more in the forefront of war. You can
find more detailed account of air power in World War One at The
Aerodrome.
After
the War
Once World War One ended,
strategists were trying to find ways of avoiding the slaughter of
the trenches, and re-introducing mobility onto the battlefield.
The tank had been one attempt to do this (see Tanks).
Other views developed the idea of air power as a way to defeat the
enemy. Three people are perhaps best remembered for the new emphasis
on air power.
Guilio
Douhet's Theory of Air Power
Guilio
Douhet was an Italian. He believed that the airplane had completely
changed warfare and that airplanes would win wars quickly and decisively.
The first priority was to gain command of the air. With command
of the air, an air force would be free to operate whenever and wherever
it desired. There was, as yet, no effective defence against air
attacks. Having achieved command of the air, pilots would then destroy
the enemy's will to resist by conducting aerial bombing on his cities,
industrial centres and civilian population. It was thought that
civilians were not prepared for the effects of war and the bombing
of population centres would create panic among the people. People
would then pressurize the government to negotiate for peace. Douhet
believed the bomber could fight its way to and from the target,
hence the origin of the phrase 'the bomber will always get through.'
(see Air
Power for a further discussion on Douhet's theories).
Sir
Basil Henry Liddell Hart
Sir
Basil Liddell Hart had fought in the war, and had supported
the use and devlopment of tanks. Liddell Hart was also one of the
most enthusiastic early supporters of air power. It was the virtually
unlimited mobility of the airplane that appealed. The airplane -
with its ability to bypass the trenches and strike directly at the
heart of the enemy - seemed to offer the best way to quickly win
wars. The debates on the proper way to use air power were rapidly
coming down in favour of the long-range bomber offensive. A sudden,
massive, devastating strike at the enemy's industrial centres seemed
the best tactic to destroy his ability to resist.
William
Mitchell
William
Mitchell was an American. He also believed in the capability
of the airplane. In 1930, Mitchell wrote: 'The advent of air power
has put a completely new complexion on the old ways of fighting
wars. We now realise that the hostile main army in the field is
not the main target. Armies themselves can be disregarded by air
power if a rapid strike is made against the opposing centres'. So,
instead of concentrating air attacks on population centres (as Douhet
argues) or the main army, airplanes should be used as strategic
weapons to strike deep into the enemy's territory, targeting cities,
military related industries and other vital areas. Unlike Douhet's
idea of aerial bombing, Mitchell's aim was to be much more accurate
and bomb specific targets.
All of these ideas developed
because the Generals had not been able to find an effective means
of winning the war quickly and cheaply. The idea rapidly spread
that air power was the answer. This had two advantages - there was
no need for a large (and expensive) army, and, as the bomber would
always get through, there was no need to spend money on air defence,
as there was no way of stopping a determined attack by enemy bombers.
Lots of money was spent between the wars developing bomber fleets.
The
Development of RAF Strategic Bombing Doctrine, 1919-1939
When World
War Two started, in September 1939, the RAF was unable to deliver
the long-promised `knock out blow' against Germany. The optimistic
`Air Plans' were shelved, and Bomber Command spent the early months
of the war showering German cities with nothing more destructive
than leaflets. In its early years, the RAF faced persistent competition
from the Navy and Army. To defend its independence, the Air Staff
defended the idea that the bomber was a devastating and revolutionary
weapon - a different method of waging war, which required a separate
air service to wage it. Far too little thought was given to the
practicalities of navigation, equipment and bomb-aiming, or to the
possibilities of air defence. For example in 1939, despite arguing
for twenty years in favour of the strategic air offensive, the Air
Staff went to war with little idea about potential economic targets
in Germany. It didn't have effective long-range powerful bombers,
or accurate navigation aids. Early daylight bombing raids in WW2
were destroyed by German fighter planes, and night raids often failed
to get anywhere near their targets. The Bomber Theory was shown
up to be a myth. Why therefore had it taken such a hold on Britain's
politicians?
The
use of the RAF to defeat rebels in the Empire
After World War I Britain
had to deal with disorders of all sorts in its empire. Uprisings
against British rule, tribal warfare and border problems seemed
widespread in the Middle East, Africa, and along India's northwest
frontier. The expense of large ground-force expeditions to keep
order was seen as a burden. During the early 1920s, the British
began to look for alternative ways to control and administer the
empire. The Royal Air Force needed to develop methods whereby its
aircraft could be used as a cheap, effective force to control the
empire.
In the 1920s Britain
bombed Kurds and Arabs in Iraq when they rebelled against Britain's
attempts to control them. By October 1922 the RAF had principal
responsibility for the war, with British ground forces being reduced.
In a single aerial sortie, in mid-May 1922, Suleymaniya was bombarded,
causing the town's 7,000 residents to evacuate the town for the
rest of the conflict. In fact, armed confrontations between Kurdish
and Arab nationalists and British imperialism continued until the
early 1930s.
Winston
Churchill, the colonial secretary at the time, believed that
gas could be used effectively against the Kurds and Iraqis (as well
as against other peoples in the Empire): 'I do not understand this
squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using
poison gas against uncivilised tribes.' Some shared Churchill's
enthusiasm for gas as an instrument of colonial control but the
British cabinet was reluctant to allow the use of a weapon that
had caused such misery and revulsion in the First World War. In
the event, gas was used against the Iraqi rebels though gas shells
were not dropped from aircraft because of practical difficulties.
Wing-Commander Sir
Arthur Harris, later Bomber Harris, head of wartime Bomber Command,
was happy to emphasise that 'The Arab and Kurd now know what real
bombing means in casualties and damage. Within forty-five minutes
a full-size village can be practically wiped out and a third of
its inhabitants killed or injured.' It was an easy matter to bomb
and machine-gun the tribespeople, because they had no means of defence
or retaliation. Iraq and Kurdistan were also used as testing grounds
for new weapons; devices specifically developed by the Air Ministry
for use against tribal villages.
Hugh
Trenchard, the RAF chief of staff concluded "Air power
is of vital concern to the Empire and in Iraq, and evidence is growing
of its great potential. It may further reduce defence spending,
not only in Iraq, but also in other Eastern territories where armed
forces are needed to keep control".
Aerial bombardment had
proven to be a satisfactory method of mass killing. Jonathan Glancey
(The Guardian, 19 April 2003) recalls: "Winston Churchill,
secretary of state for war and air, estimated that without the RAF,
somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would
be needed to control Iraq. Reliance on the airforce promised to
cut these numbers to just 4,000 and 10,000. Churchill's confidence
was soon repaid". Glancey reports that the RAF "flew missions
totaling 4,008 hours, dropped 97 tons of bombs and fired 183,861
rounds for the loss of nine men killed, seven wounded and 11 aircraft
destroyed behind rebel lines".
You can find out more
about the RAF and inter-war operations in the Empire from the following
websites: Terror
Bombing and Air
Power in Small Wars.
Abyssinia
During their invasion
of Abyssinia in 1935-36 the Italians used poison gas and bombing
against the poorly-equipped Abyssinian army and unarmed civilians.
It shows how a developed country could use its technology and conquer
a foe. Again aircraft played the key role. Without anti-aircraft
guns, the Ethiopians could not defend themselves. James Ambrose
Brown, wrote: "Abyssinia, primitive and inaccessible in 1935,
had been largely conquered from the air. In the campaign Italian
air-power had been used with ruthless ability against the massed
armies of chieftains and feudal lords. It had attacked the miles-long
processions of peasant foot soldiers, mule trains and camp followers,
pursued armies broken in battle along the only escape routes, leaving
corpses at every river crossing and mountain pass. It had laid waste
the land with incendiary bomb and mustard gas. You can find more
on the Italian conquest of Abyssinia at the Military
History Department.
Guernica
The bombing
and destruction of Guernica in 1937 had an enormous impact on opinion
in Britain. Cinemas showed film of the German planes attacking the
Basque town as part of the Spanish Civil War. This helped to reinforce
the Bomber Theory and the fear of air attack. To find out more about
Guernica go to these websites: Spanish
Refugees and Guernica.
Appeasement
After Hitler came to
power in 1933, Britain had to decide how best to respond to the
threat he posed. Britain had a very small army. The Chancellor of
Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, opposed any funding for an army
to fight overseas. Chamberlain wanted funding for air power which
he considered a more effective deterrent against enemy attack. In
the 1930s the theory was developed, as mentioned earlier, that nothing
could stop modern bombers. The increased speeds of the bombers reduced
the time taken to reach the target, and because they flew higher
this made it impossible to send fighters in the air in time to intercept
the bomber force. If the bombers were intercepted, their heavy armament
would enable them to defeat the attackers. It was a convincing argument,
especially because it coincided with the need to save money because
of the Great Depression, and the difficulty Governments faced in
paying for mass unemployment. This was also the time of the famous
'Peace Ballot' and the Oxford Union debate on not fighting for King
and Country. People in Britain felt very strongly that anything
was better than another war - and the Bomber Theory suggested that
the bomber might prevent another war.
Many military thinkers
believed that in any major conflict of the future vast fleets of
bombers, pounding the enemy's capital to rubble, would decide the
issue in a matter of hours. In 1932 Stanley
Baldwin, then a prominent member of the government, gloomily
told the House of Commons, 'I think it is well for the man in the
street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect
him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber
will always get through. The only defence is offence, which means
that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than
the enemy if you want to save yourself.'
In March 1935 Hitler proclaimed the existence of a new German air
force, the Luftwaffe, boasting that it was already equal in size
to the RAF. In the late 1930s British air planners anticipated that,
if war came, the Luftwaffe would launch an overwhelming air attack
on London, referred to as the 'knock-out blow'. It would be swift,
sudden and shocking. The Air Staff calculated that the Luftwaffe
could deliver 700 tons of bombs a day on London, each ton causing
at least fifty casualties. Their heads filled with these doom-laden
figures, the Home Office calculated that in the first three months
of war 60,000,000 square feet of coffin timber would be required
to bury the dead. The proposed expense resulted in the stockpiling
of tens of thousands of collapsible papier-mâché and
cardboard coffins.
Advised by leading experts,
the government also planned for the psychological as well as the
physical worst. The Ministry of Health joined the numbers game,
estimating that it might have to deal with up to 4 000 000 mental
cases in the first six months of war. In these circumstances it
was assumed in government circles that civilian morale would crack
under air bombardment. Panic-stricken hordes of Londoners would
pour out of the shattered capital into the countryside, where the
government had plans to turn them back, with machine-gun fire if
necessary. People, especially in high places, were scared of the
Bomber! For more on this subject see Appeasement
and An Appeasement
History.
Conclusion
We are used
to hearing the arguments about the 'Guilty Men' of Munich, about
Appeasement right from 1919 when some thought the Treaty of Versailles
too harsh on Germany, about the strong desire not to repeat history
and the blood-bath of the First World War. What we don't think about
quite so often is the role the Bomber Theory played in all this.
Perhaps it was fear of the bomber - as Baldwin said, 'The Bomber
will always get through,' that was the driving force behind Appeasement.
What do you think?
