The Making of a Modern Army and its Operations in the Field: A study based on the experience of three years on the French front (1914-1917) — John Shaqi
The Making of a Modern Army and its Operations in the Field: A study based on the experience of three years on the French front (1914-1917)Radiguet, René-Louis-Jules
History
The Making of a Modern Army and its Operations in the Field: A study based on the experience of three years on the French front (1914-1917)
Radiguet, René-Louis-Jules
Armies; Military art and science; World War, 1914-1918
We are confident that our American friends will develop to the extreme
limit their aviation of bombardment, and will train a great number of
their aviators for long-distance flights by night or day. Very many
of the most important military establishments in western Germany are
within reach of our blows. Up to now the insufficiency of our material
has been the sole reason of the failure of our aviation to attempt
the destruction of her plants at Essen, Cologne, Manheim, Metz, etc.
Certain expeditions have proved that all these places are within the
reach of fairly good machines piloted by well-trained aviators.
What would become of the Essen works the day that 1200 or 1500
airplanes attacked them in groups of 30 or 40, following each other
at ten-minute intervals; some bombarding the works with high-power
torpedoes, others with incendiary bombs, others with suffocating
projectiles, utterly demoralizing the workmen and spreading terror in
their midst?
Certainly there would be losses, for the Germans have surrounded their
works with numerous anti-aircraft guns, but would the more or less
complete destruction of the Essen works be too dearly bought by the
loss of a number of machines? Moreover we do not believe that a raid on
their big plants, if well prepared and well carried out, would be very
costly.
The use of aviation to destroy the enemy’s munition plants will, in our
opinion, greatly hasten the end of the war, and spare a large number of
lives.
If the war lasts, the long-distance aviation will have to be employed
very extensively during the summer to set fire indiscriminately to
the harvest in the enemy’s country, and even in the territory which
they occupy as invaders, since there is no reason to spare the invaded
sections as long as the natives are not allowed to have their share of
the crops. Furthermore, devices will have to be invented to facilitate
this work of destruction.
It is materially impossible to give the bombing-machines a speed equal
to that of the battle-planes. Great importance however must be attached
to the choice of motors and to obtaining the greatest speed possible.
All these machines have two propellers and some are provided with three
motors.
The first bombing expeditions were undertaken during the first months
of the war. From the very beginning, the Germans realized that
airplanes could go far and strike dangerous blows. Paris was bombarded
as early as September, 1914. In time, and as the machines were
improved, the bombardments became more disastrous. In the course of the
first half of 1915, British aviators dropped bombs on Friedrichshaven,
the Zeppelin station on the Lake of Constance; French aviators attacked
Stuttgart and Carlsruhe; and since the beginning of 1917, the Germans
have multiplied their raids on London and the coasts of England.
We believe that bombing aviation, for purely military purposes, will
assume an ever-increasing importance in the war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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