5/26/2023 0 Comments Martin van creveld fighting powerAt sea, aircraft launched torpedoes, laid mines, and hunted submarines. Among them were reconnaissance, liaison, air-to-air combat, strafing, interdiction, and “strategic” bombing far behind the front. By that time many different types of missions were being routinely flown. In 1918 the Royal Air Force became the first independent service of its kind, to be followed by several others during the interwar period. Losses, due either to accidents or to the fighting itself, sometimes amounted to one third of the total per month. However, the impact of air power was limited, both because the equipment was primitive and because the Italians never had more than some twenty machines available in the gigantic theater of war at any one time.ĭuring World War I the main belligerents between them produced well over 200,000 aircraft. The most important types of missions flown were reconnaissance, liaison, and bombing. “Flying machines,” as they were known, first saw action during the Italian-Turkish War of 1911‒12. The objective of the present essay is to briefly explain and update that claim. This author, to the contrary, has several times argued that the days of air power as traditionally understood are numbered. A century after military air power first started playing an important role in warfare, where may be heading? Most observers, impressed by what they see as dazzling technological progress, seem to believe that the sky is the limit.
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