|
Literary corner...The Command of the Air
I'm currently reading General Giulio Douhet's the Command of the Air, the 1942 translation by the U.S. Army Airforce (available on the web). He had both 20-20 hindsight on the causes of the deadlock in WWI (Infantry Attacks) and the shape of things to come (PG). He is best known as the advocate of the bomber as the decisive weapon of warfare "the bomber will always get through" but his insights into how successful campaigns in WW2 would need to be conducted are gripping. No better description of the essence of lightning war than "There is no doubt now that half of the destruction wrought by the war would have been enough {to end it} if it had been accomplished in three months instead of four years. A quarter of it would have been sufficient if it had been wrought in eight days". His book emphasised total war on the civilian population, and was carefully studied by Bomber Command and the Army Airforce and was applied systematically by both forces throughout the war. He believed that chemical and bacteriological warfare would be the dominant payload of the next war, and his fatal flaw was his underestimation of fighter interception of bombers. A great and Nostradamian read of a book finished in 1922.
|
