Abstract
In 1910, a few years before the outbreak of the First World War, French General Ferdinand Foch, who would in the end command all Allied forces in the Great War, gave his opinion on aviation, still very much in its infancy then. According to Foch, ‘aviation may be fine as a sport … but as an instrument of war, it is nothing [c’est zero]’. Contrary to his often-used quote that the Treaty of Versailles was not peace ‘but an armistice for twenty years’, Foch was wrong about the importance of aerial warfare in the decades after the start of the Mutterkatastrophe. In fact, the total war of 1914–18 led to rapid improvements in aircraft technology, tactics, and operational thinking. Indeed, currently it would be impossible to achieve victory without dominance of the skies, although ‘boots on the ground’ are still very much essential to secure a victory.
Although it is a quantum leap from the first biplanes to today’s drones, the goal of aerial warfare by and large has remained the same. The history of aerial warfare is complex and wide-ranging, even though it is still only just a little over hundred years ago that the Royal Air Force was established as a separate entity from the British Army. Frank Ledwidge, who earlier wrote the well-received books Losing Small Wars and Investment in Blood, has done an excellent job in writing a concise, yet very detailed account of the history of aerial warfare from its inception to the present day. Writing in a lucid style, he provides an interesting account for both experts and non-experts.
Starting with a detailed description of the anatomy of a (successful) airstrike (far more complex than it might seem at first sight), Ledwidge provides a chronological analysis of the main developments in both the use of airpower as well as the theoretical reasoning behind it. Perhaps the first to do the latter thoroughly and academically in the Interbellum was the Italian Giulio Douhet. Basically, he was of the opinion, as Ledwidge writes, that ‘air power might be able to avoid this kind of pointless killing [of the First World War]. It offered the option of going directly for the enemy’s strategic heart’ (p. 45). As the Second World War would show, this also meant (deliberately) targeting the enemy’s civilian population as part of total war.
However, the idea that bombing people into submission or that it would make them rise against their regime, proved false. The so-called ‘morale bombing’ mostly succeeded in rallying the population behind their leaders, as was the case in Nazi Germany and later Serbia during NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign in 1999. Still, (strategic) bombing was essential in the outcome of the Second World War, although the debate about the precise extent of its contribution and whether or not bombing cities is morally/legally justified is still ongoing and intense. Ledwidge also does a good job at rectifying myths, for example that of the Battle of Britain of 1940. Like Richard Overy has shown earlier, Ledwidge emphasizes that it was not a victory of the few against the many: ‘Professional ruthlessness was rather more displayed on the British side than the German. As for being outnumbered, there were roughly the same number of British fighters as German ones at the start of the Battle and rather more at the end’ (p. 70).
Important as dominance of the air has become in warfare, it is not enough to secure final victory, as Ledwidge convincingly points out. This was true as much for the Second World War as it is today, as well as in the Vietnam War. In the words of the author, ‘any military presence is often temporary; in one sense soldiers “commute” to battle in such operations [troops moved into combat by air]; this is the problem we still see today in counterinsurgency conflicts where there are insufficient troop to take and hold ground’ (p. 117). Ledwidge makes the same claim for the First Gulf War (1990–91), often seen as an unalloyed triumph of air power. With regard to that, he writes, ‘the point should be also be made that, although some Iraqi units retreated before the invasion by coalition armies, Kuwait was occupied by US and allied ground forces. This was not a victory of air power alone’ (p. 146).
What the future holds for aerial warfare is unclear, perhaps space is indeed the final frontier/battlefield in which air forces in one way or another will fight for dominance and superiority. Drones are already quite an important part of the world’s air forces inventory. What Ledwidge does make perfectly clear, however, is that air power is (and remains) critical ‘to most if not all military operations today’ (p. 172). Why this has been and still is the case, is expertly analysed by Ledwidge, and that in a little less than 190 pages.