Giulio Douhet

Giulio Douhet (30 May 1869 – 15 February 1930) was an Italian general and air power theorist. He was a key proponent of strategic bombing in aerial warfare. He was a contemporary of the air warfare advocates Walther Wever, Billy Mitchell, and Hugh Trenchard.

In his influential 1921 work The Command of the Air, Douhet argued that strategic bombing—particularly targeting civilian populations and infrastructure—could break a nation's will to fight. He believed that by inflicting enough terror and destruction from the air, the morale of the civilian population would collapse, forcing the enemy government to capitulate.

Douhet's theories proved influential, although the effectiveness of his strategies remains debated.

Biography

Born in Caserta, Campania, Italy, from a family of Savoyard exiles who had migrated there after the cession of Savoy to France he attended the Military Academy of Modena and was commissioned into the artillery of the Italian Army in 1882.

Assigned to the General Staff, after the beginning of the new century, Douhet published lectures on military mechanization. In 1912, Douhet assumed command of the Italian aviation battalion at Turin and wrote a set of Rules for the Use of Airplanes in War (Regole per l'uso degli aeroplani in guerra) — one of the first doctrine manuals of its kind.

Aerial strategy

thumb|Douhet's former home in Rome today

In his book Douhet argued that air power was revolutionary because it operated in the third dimension. Aircraft could fly over surface forces, relegating them to secondary importance. The vastness of the sky made defense almost impossible, so the essence of air power was the offensive. The only defense was a good offense. The air force that could achieve command of the air by bombing the enemy air arm into extinction would doom its enemy to perpetual bombardment. Command of the air meant victory.

Douhet believed in the morale effects of bombing. Air power could break a people's will by destroying a country's "vital centers". Armies became superfluous because aircraft could overfly them and attack these centers of the government, military and industry with impunity, a principle later called "The bomber will always get through". Targeting was central to this strategy and he believed that air commanders would prove themselves by their choice of targets. These would vary from situation to situation, but Douhet identified the five basic target types as: industry, transport infrastructure, communications, government and "the will of the people".

The last category was particularly important to Douhet, who believed in the principle of total war.

The chief strategy laid out in his writings, the Douhet model, is pivotal in debates regarding the use of air power and bombing campaigns. The Douhet model rests on the belief that in a conflict, the infliction of high costs from aerial bombing can shatter civilian morale. This would unravel the social basis of resistance, and pressure citizens into asking their governments to surrender. The logic of this model is that exposing large portions of civilian populations to the terror of destruction or the shortage of consumer goods would damage civilian morale into submission. By smothering the enemy's civilian centers with bombs, Douhet argued the war would become so terrible that the common people would rise against their government, overthrow it with revolution, then sue for peace.

This emphasis on the strategic offensive would blind Douhet to the possibilities of air defense or tactical support of armies. In his second edition of The Command of the Air he maintained such aviation was "useless, superfluous and harmful". He proposed an independent air force composed primarily of long-range load-carrying bombers. He believed interception of these bombers was unlikely, but allowed for a force of escort aircraft to ward off interceptors. Attacks would not require great accuracy. On a tactical level he advocated using three types of bombs in quick succession; explosives to destroy the target, incendiaries to ignite the damaged structures, and poison gas to keep firefighters and rescue crews away.

The entire population was in the front line of an air war and they could be terrorized with urban bombing. In his book The War of 19-- he described a fictional war between Germany and a Franco-Belgian alliance in which the Germans launched massive terror bombing raids on the populace, reducing their cities to ashes before their armies could mobilize. Because bombing would be so terrible, Douhet believed that wars would be short. As soon as one side lost command of the air it would capitulate rather than face the terrors of air attack. In other words, the enemy air force was the primary target. A decisive victory here would hasten the end of the war.

Critical reception

Though the initial response to The Command of the Air was muted, the second edition generated attacks from his military peers, particularly those in the navy and army. Douhet's was an apocalyptic vision that gripped the popular imagination. His theories were unproven for another 20 years, when it was found that he had under-estimated the resources needed for successful strategic bombing. In ' in July 1928, he wrote that he believed that 300 tons of bombs over the most important cities would end a war in less than a month.

Biography

Aerial strategy

Critical reception

See also

Further reading

References