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“The brutal and inescapable conclusion” of Guilio Douhet

The advent of air power.

Guilio Douhet (1869 -1930) was an Italian military theorist whose ideas on air power were born out of his own observations during World War I. He saw in the advent of the airplane a massive change in the nature of warfare, or a fundamental break from the “continuity of the past,” as he worded it. The days of the supremacy of the army and navy were waning, if not already gone. “The brutal and inescapable conclusion we must draw is this…the strongest army…” that could be fielded, and the “strongest navy we can dispose on our seas will prove no effective defense against determined efforts of the enemy to bomb our cities.”

Douhet was an early, vocal proponent of the need to establish an independent air force. Both the army and navy were inclined to employ aircraft (“auxiliary aviation”), but only in the furtherance of their traditional missions. A truly separate force needed to be established, one that that could operate with the army and navy, but was also able to act independently. Douhet quickly took this idea much farther than just the need to establish a co-equal air service, however. Because of the rapid technological innovations sweeping the world, and the expectation that “future wars will be total in character and scope,” Douhet expected the independent air force to eventually eclipse the other services. He declared many times that to command the air is to achieve victory, while to cede this command is to be defeated. And the only way to achieve this command of the air, to conquer it, is through the establishment of an “adequate air force.”

Downward view of a "Chateau Thierre Aeroplane", a World War I aircraft, in flight over Argone Forest and French trenches, ca.1914-1918.

Douhet believed that air power was innately an offensive capability. This capability “strikes suddenly and gives the enemy no time to parry the blow…” When faced with an enemy with a capable air force, the most likely course to be followed was to attack, to wipe out the enemy’s air force. The definition of the command of the air was to “prevent the enemy from flying while retaining the ability to fly oneself.” Therefore, one must be able to strike the enemy’s sources of air power (preferably the “nests” and not the individual “birds”). After "conquering the command of the air", the air force would then be free to focus on strategic bombing. Referred to by Douhet as “aerial strategy,” strategic bombers would then be free to “unleash without risk their offensive power” against the enemy army, navy, or civilian population centers.

It is this last target that demonstrates something of a break with previous warfare. To Douhet (and other prominent proponents of air power), the civilian populations were no longer off limits. Douhet had noted early in The Command of the Air the destructive power to be delivered by aircraft future wars: explosives, chemicals, and even biological agents. Previously, says Douhet, civilian populations were insulated from the terror of war. But now, strategic bombers could force an enemy to capitulate by directly threatening those that enabled a nation to continue fighting over prolonged periods.

Douhet’s ideas were seized upon by other proponents of air power. Billy Mitchell voiced similar beliefs that strategic bombing could target enemy industry, something he saw as more humane than the bloody war of attrition demonstrated in the First World War. Clearly, the idea of such targeting was made manifest in the Second World War. Yet, although contemporaries developed similar ideas, subsequent theorists have found much of his ideas to be no longer relevant or accurate. Douhet contemporary Lord Trenchard espoused a more refined strategic targeting, one that sought to paralyze the enemy’s war-making capability by attacking munition production centers, as well as logistic and communications capabilities. Others, according to David MacIsaac, have pointed out that Douhet’s assumption of the indiscriminate use of chemical and biological weapons were in error. In addition, even Mitchell disagreed on the utility of non-strategic bombing aircraft such as fighters. Regardless, it can be argued (as by historian Phillip S. Meilinger) that although much of his ideas now prove obsolete, some of his basic concepts remain even today.

Sources:

Douhet, Guilio. The Command of the Air. Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983.

Philip Meilinger, ed., Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory. Maxwell, AL: Air University Press, 1997.

David MacIsaac, “Voices from the Central Blue,” in Makers of Modern Strategy from Machievelli to the Nuclear Age. Peter Paret ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

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