Giulio Douhet

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Giulio Douhet is remembered best for propounding a doctrine of offensive strategic air attack as a preferable, even more humane, form of warfare than the massive battles of attrition that marked World War I. His bold ideas about air warfare injected a tremendous energy into the usual strategic discussions of nations able to produce, or procure, such advanced technology. Although it would be incorrect to say that this approach to armed conflict originated with Douhet, his ability to integrate a rapidly expanding body of concepts about aerial warfare provided airpower advocates with a cogent theoretical foundation upon which to build.

Like American airpower adherent Billy Mitchell (1879–1936), Douhet began his army career at an early age and during a period of national transition. In addition, both men were moved by their advocacy of aviation to dissent vigorously, at times even recklessly, from military orthodoxy. This course eventually led to court‐martial, suspension from active duty, and in Douhet's case im prisonment for one year. Unlike Mitchell, however, World War I resurrected Douhet's career. In 1918, he was made chief of the Italian Army's Central Aeronautical Board, a post he held until retiring from service as a general in 1921. Also in 1921, his seminal work on aerial warfare, The Command of the Air, was published. In 1922, the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini appointed him head of Italy's aviation program.

Douhet's central argument that future conflicts would be decided by the nation most able to destroy an opponent's means and will to resist through airpower still engenders much debate. Moreover, the ongoing struggle to validate or refute the concepts set forth in The Command of the Air suggests a transcendent quality unmatched by other air war theorists. For airmen, in particular, his views gave rise to a tenacious search for the enemy's “vital center”—the perfect target set.

Bibliography

• Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, 1942; rept. 1938

Douhet, Giulio (1869-1930) an Italian army general of World War I. Although trained as an artillery officer, he commanded Italy's first aviation unit, the Aeronautical Battalion, from 1912 to 1915. His harsh criticism of how the war was being managed led to his court-martial, imprisonment, and retirement. After a 1917 investigation of an Italian loss at Caporetto demonstrated that Douhet's criticisms had been justified, and his conviction was reversed and he was appointed to head the aviation service. He is remembered primarily for his book, Il dominio dell'aria (1921; The Command of the Air [1942])—the first formal treatise on air strategy—in which he challenged the hostile resistance aroused by the military potential of flight until that potential was accepted and realized. Although some of his ideas have become obsolete, many of them were adopted by all of the major powers before and during World War II. His idea that strategic bombing could disorganize and destroy an enemy's war effort was well demonstrated throughout that war.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Giulio Douhet (1869-1930) is regarded as one of the first military strategists to recognize the predominant role aerial warfare would play in twentieth-century battle. Known as the father of airpower, Douhet's theories are still popular among modern military aviators.

Douhet's service in the Italian Army before and during World War I provided him with the experiences he would use to develop his theories of the function of aerial combat in subsequent warfare. Among the revolutionary ideas put forth by Douhet in his most famous work, Il domino dell'aria (The Command of the Air), was the necessity of a warring nation to possess first-strike capabilities via aircraft. Douhet argued that these capabilities should be used before an official declaration of war to ensure a swift, decisive, and demoralizing victory that would shorten any potentially drawn-out naval or land campaign. Believing the airplane to be "the offensive weapon par excellence," he also established the air warfare strategy of the bombing of an opponent's industrial centers and metropolitan infrastructures, reasoning that, even if the attacked nation had advance warning of imminent air strikes, they could never be certain of the specific targets.

Douhet predicted that the future of war would abandon distinctions between civilian and military personnel and justify the bombing of civilian targets by declaring total war in the modern world as an uncivilized pursuit unbound by previous notions of civilized warfare conduct. To support his theory that wars are won by eliminating the will of an opposing country to fight back, which occurs most effectively by attacking the enemy's cities, Douhet wrote: "Victory smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur." Ultimately, Douhet believed that such a strategy would shorten any war effort significantly, thus resulting in a minimum of casualties because the enemy would be forced to surrender more quickly. He further argued that governments should establish air forces separate from other military branches and appropriate the majority of defense budgets to the development of fighter planes. Douhet also believed that, because most land and naval combat were primarily defensive in nature, they were prone to stalemates. He predicted incorrectly that neither would possess significant value in future warfare.

Despite his forecasts for the inherent primacy of aerial warfare and the shortcomings of his forecasts for aerial technology, Douhet's theories and strategies were employed extensively by both Allied and Axis forces during World War II - most notably against Dresden, Germany, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, by the Allies; and against London, England, by the Axis Luftwaffe. His theories continued to be employed in such campaigns as Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s, the Balkans in the 1990s, and Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002.

Pioneered Aerial Combat

Born in Capreta, Italy, in 1869, Douhet belonged to a family with a long history of military service to the House of Savoy. While dabbling in writing poetry and dramatic pieces, Douhet was also found to be adept in military matters. He expressed his views on the increasing mechanization of warfare in several works prior to World War I, including a journal article in which he wrote: "It must seem that the sky, too, is to become another battlefield no less important than the battlefields on land and at sea. For if there are nations that exist untouched by the sea, there are none that exist without the breath of air." He concluded that, "[t]he army and the navy must recognize in the air force the birth of a third brother - younger, but nonetheless important - in the great military family."

Douhet, who had never flown an aircraft, became involved with the aerial unit of the Italian Army in 1909. By 1911, he was commanding a contingent of nine airplanes in Italy's campaign against the Turkish Empire on the Libyan front. The conflict marked many firsts in aerial combat reconnaissance. It marked the first aerial photo reconnaissance, the first aerial bombing mission, and the first aircraft shot down. Douhet's successes led his superiors to appoint him commander of the entire Italian Army aviation battalion. However, he became frustrated with military protocol and bureaucracy and proceeded to commission the building of a three-engine military aircraft with a combined horsepower of 300. He also sent very impatient and caustic memos to his military superiors. These memos became public and resulted in his being court-martialed and imprisoned for more than a year. Upon his release near the end of World War I, Douhet resumed his responsibilities and was promoted to brigadier general in 1921. That same year, he published the first edition of Il domino dell'aria, which he revised for its definitive version in 1927. In 1922, he was named Commissioner of Aviation, serving under Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini. He resigned later that year to dedicate his time to writing.

If the beliefs espoused by Douhet during World War I served to anger his superiors, they were to prove prophetic following the publication of Il domino dell'aria. Expressing the need for a more updated model of modern warfare, he argued for the creation of an independent air force. Air warfare, he predicted, would become the decisive factor in future wars. Douhet advocated the use of incendiary bombs, chemicals, gasoline, and high explosives on population centers, reasoning that the "time would soon come when, to put an end to horror and suffering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of self-preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war." He recommended that initial attacks employ explosives to frighten the population on the ground; incendiaries to set massive and wide-spread fires; and chemical weapons to deter fire fighters. At first, these theories shocked military strategists who remembered the long-term debilitating effects of the use of mustard gas in the World War I trenches, but Douhet argued that war is already amoral, and that any method used to shorten a war is therefore justifiable. He also defended the establishment of an air force that was completely separate from all other military divisions. He discounted notions that an army or navy might require their own fleet of aircraft that could, at the very least, defend the air force's bombers, believing that an aerial bomber would be able to defend itself from ground and air retaliation.

Following the nineteenth-century theories of military strategists Albert Thayer Mahan and Henri Jomini, Douhet also believed that military targets were of secondary importance, asserting that industrial centers and supply lines were the more decisive targets. He wrote that the country that possessed the strongest air power would achieve military primacy and that total command of the air would render land and sea forces comparatively insignificant because they could not achieve such swift, economical, or effective results as an aerial bombing. Douhet wrote that since the advent of aerial warfare capabilities, the entire history of warfare had been rendered irrelevant, including the concept of differentiating between civilian and military populations. Since World War I, Douhet reasoned, all wars in the future would be total wars between entire nations that involve every man, woman, and child. Knowing that all of a nation's population was subject to casualties would serve to abbreviate prolonged hostilities.

Books

MacIsaac, David, "Voices from the Central Blue: The Air Power Theorists," in Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Peter Paret, editor, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1986.

Pisano, Dominic A., Gernstein, Joanne M. Schneide, Karl S., Memory and the Great War in the Air, University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington, 1992.

Tucker, Spencer C., Who's Who in Twentieth-Century Warfare, Routledge, London and New York, 2001.

Online

Cassin, Eddy, "Giulo Douhet: Father of Air Power, 1869-1930," http://www.comandosupremo.com/Douhet.html (January 30, 2002).

Estes, Lieutenant Colonel Richard H., "Giulo Douhet: More on Target than He Knew," http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/6win90.html (January 30, 2002).

"General Giulio Douhet: The First and Most Famous Air War Theoretician," Air Way College: Gateway to Military Theory & Theorists,http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-thry.htm.

Shiner, Colonel John F., "Reflections on Douhet: The Classic Approach," http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1986/jan-feb/shiner.html (January 30, 2002).

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Giulio Douhet

General Giulio Douhet ( Caserta 30 May 1869 - Rome 15 February 1930) was an Italian air power theorist. He was a key proponent of strategic bombing in aerial warfare.

Contents 1 History 2 Aerial strategy 3 Critical reception 4 See also 5 Further reading 6 External links 7 References

History

Douhet was a contemporary of the 1920s air warfare advocates Billy Mitchell and Sir Hugh Trenchard. Born in Caserta, Campania, Italy, he attended the Modena Military Academy and was commissioned into the infantry (bersaglieri). Later he attended the Polytechnic Institute in Turin where he studied science and engineering.

Assigned to the General Staff in the early 20th century Douhet published lectures on military mechanization. With the arrival of dirigibles and then fixed-wing aircraft in Italy he quickly recognized the military potential of the new technology. Douhet saw the pitfalls of allowing air power to be fettered by ground commanders and began to advocate the creation of a separate air arm, commanded by airmen. He teamed up with the young aircraft engineer Gianni Caproni to extol the virtues of air power in the years ahead.

In 1911 Italy went to war against Turkey for control of Libya. The war that saw aircraft used for the first time in reconnaissance, transport, artillery spotting and bombing roles. Douhet was tasked with writing a report on the aviation lessons learned in which he suggested high altitude bombing should be the primary role of aircraft. In 1912 Douhet assumed command of the Italian aviation battalion at Turin, where he wrote a set of Rules for the Use of Airplanes in War -- one of the first doctrine manuals of its kind. However, Douhet's preaching on air power marked him as a 'radical'. After an incident in which he ordered construction of Caproni bombers without authorization, he was exiled to the infantry.

When World War I began, Douhet began to call for Italy to launch a massive military buildup—particularly in aircraft. "To gain command of the air," he said, was to render an enemy "harmless". He proposed a force of 500 bombers that could drop 125 tons of bombs daily, but was ignored. When Italy entered the war in 1915 Douhet was shocked by the army's incompetence and unpreparedness. He corresponded with his superiors and government officials, criticising the conduct of the war and advocating an air power solution. One particularly scathing letter resulted in Douhet's arrest and court-martial for spreading false news and agitation. He was sentenced to a year in a military jail.

Douhet continued to write about air power from his cell, finishing a novel on air power and proposing a massive Allied fleet of aircraft in communications to ministers. He was released and returned to duty shortly after the disastrous Battle of Caporetto in 1917. He soon became the central director of aviation at the General Air Commisariat where he worked to improve Italy's air arm.

In June 1918 Douhet left the Army, disgusted with his superiors. After the armistice he was able to have his court-martial overturned and was promoted to General. But rather than return to active duty Douhet continued writing. In 1921 he completed a hugely influential treatise on strategic bombing titled The Command of the Air.

Aerial strategy

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. 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.

Air Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris set out in 1942 to prove Douhet's theories valid during World War II. Through four years under his command, RAF Bomber Command attempted to destroy the main German cities. By 1944–1945, in concert with the USAAF, they had largely achieved this aim; but no revolution toppled the Third Reich. The heavy bombers involved in the Combined Bomber Offensive did not win the war alone, as Harris had argued they would. Douhet's theories about forcing the population to starting a revolution, when subjected to practical application, were shown to be ineffective in this case. In fact, there is considerable evidence to show the bombings did nothing but antagonize the German people, galvanizing them to work harder for their country.

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.

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.

Critical reception

Though the initial response to The Command of the Air was muted, the second edition generated virulent attacks from his military peers—particularly those in the navy and army. Douhet's was an apocalyptic vision that gripped the popular imagination. But his theories would be unproven—and therefore unchallenged—for another 20 years. In many cases he had hugely exaggerated the effects of bombing. His calculations for the amount of bombs and poison gas required to destroy a city were ludicrously optimistic. World War II would prove many of his predictions to be wrong—particularly on the vulnerability of public morale to bombing. In "Rivista Aeuronautica" 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. This can be compared with the fact that the allies during War War II dropped in excess of 2.5 million tons of bombs of Europe without this being directly decisive for the war.^[1]

Outside of Italy, Douhet's reception was mixed. In Britain he remained a curio -- The Command of the Air was not required reading at the RAF Staff College. However, France, Germany and America were far more receptive and his theories were discussed and disseminated there.

A supporter of Benito Mussolini, Douhet was appointed commissioner of aviation when the Fascists assumed power but he soon gave up this bureaucrat's job to continue writing, which he did up to his death from a heart attack in 1930. More than 70 years on, many of his predictions have failed to come true, but some of his concepts—gaining command of the air, terror bombing and attacking vital centers—continue to underpin air power theory to this day.

See also

• Aerial warfare
• Strategic bombing

Further reading

• Giulio Douhet, Command of the Air (USAF Warrior Studies), Office of Air Force History, United States Government Printing Office (1983), trade paperback, ISBN 0-912799-10-2; trade paperback, Airforce History Museums Pro (1998) , 406 pages, ISBN 0-16-049772-8; hardcover, Arno Press (1942), 396 pages, ISBN 0-405-04567-0; hardcover, Natraj Publishers, (2003), 325 pages, ISBN 81-8158-002-8); first published in 1921; Coward McCann & Geoghegan, (1942), hardcover, 394 pages; Faber and Faber (1943), hardcover 325 pages; Collector's Edition, Easton Press, Library of Military History (1994), ISBN 0-405-04567-0
• Joseph Henrotin. L'Airpower au 21ème siècle. Enjeux et perspectives de la stratégie aérienne. Bruxelles : Bruylant (RMES), 2005, softcover
• Louis A. Sigaud, Air Power and Unification: Douhet's Principles of Warfare and Their Application to the United States, The Military Service Publishing Co., 1949, hardcover

External links

• Command of the Air (complete text, 1942 translation)

References

1. ^ Johansson, Alf W Europas krig. ("Wars of Europe") (in Swedish) Stockholm; Tidens Förlag. ISBN 91-550-3818-2. page 281.

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