Aerial Warfare Final

Juan Casares Sambueza

Professor Anne Dewey

English 190

9 December 2013

The Wars in the Sky:

Aerial Warfare in WWI and WWII

“To us who have until now been inexorably bound to the surface of the earth, it must seem strange that the sky, too, is to become another battlefield no less important than the battlefields on land and at sea. For if there are nations that exist that are untouched by the sea, there are NONE that exist without the breath of air… The army and the navy must recognize in the air force the birth of a third brother-younger, but none the less important, in the great military family” (Douhet 27). In 1909, an era when airplanes could barely fly, let alone, be used as weapons, Italian general Giulio Douhet pronounced these words foreshadowing the future of aerial warfare. He saw in airplanes a potential that could rival the power of armies (land warfare) and navies (sea warfare). He was far from being wrong.

The term aerial warfare emerged soon after the advent of aviation, when aircrafts were introduced to the war ground in the early 20th century. Airplanes gave war a new dimension by opening the battlefield, by introducing an aerial perspective, and by substantially increasing damage on the battlefront and its surroundings. By the end of WWI aerial warfare consisted of three recognizable facets: reconnaissance, aerial bombing, and aerial combat. It continued developing till the beginning of WWII, where three new facets emerged: air supremacy, kamikazes, and nuclear bombing. Most historians agree that the outcomes of World War I and World War II were greatly influenced by aerial warfare. The former (WWI) introduced airplanes to the battlefield, forever changing the concept of war, and the latter (WWII) served as evidence that airplanes were capable of causing inconceivable damage, becoming the deadliest and most effective form of combat to date.

1. World War I

World War I (1914-1918), also known as the Great War, earned its name because...