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Biplanes and Bombsights: British Bombing in World War I

Biplanes and Bombsights: British Bombing in World War I
Author: George K. Williams
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2015-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 178625025X
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This study measures wartime claims against actual results of the British bombing campaign against Germany in the Great War. Components of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), and the Royal Air Force (RAF) conducted bombing raids between July 1916 and the Armistice. Specifically, Number 3 Wing (RNAS), 41 Wing of Eighth Brigade (RFC), and the Independent Force (IF) bombed German targets from bases in France. Lessons supposedly gleaned from these campaigns heavily influenced British military aviation, underpinning RAF doctrine up to and into the Second World War. Fundamental discrepancies exist, however, between the official verdict and the first-hand evidence of bombing results gathered by intelligence teams of the RAF and the US Air Service. Results of the British bombing efforts were demonstrably more modest, and costs in casualties and wastage far steeper, than previously acknowledged. A preoccupation with “moral effect” came to dominate the British view of their aerial offensives. Maj Gen Hugh M. Trenchard played a pivotal role in bringing this misperception to the forefront of public consciousness. After the Armistice, the potential of strategic bombing was officially extolled to justify the RAF as an independent service. The Air Ministry’s final report must be evaluated as a partisan manifestation of this crusade and not as a definitive final assessment, as it has been mistakenly accepted previously. This study develops and substantiates a comprehensive evaluation of British long-range bombing in the First World War. Its findings run directly counter to the generally held opinion. Natural limitations, technical shortfalls, and aircrews lacking proficiency acted in concert with German defenses to produce far less results than those claimed.

Biplanes and Bombsights

Biplanes and Bombsights
Author: George G. Williams
Publisher: www.Militarybookshop.CompanyUK
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 9781780392752
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Originally published in 1999. Colonel Williams presents a comprehensive study of British bombing efforts in the Great War. He contends that the official version of costs and results underplays the costs while overplaying the results. Supported by postwar findings of both US and British evaluation teams, he argues that British bombing efforts were significantly less effective than heretofore believed. Colonel Williams also presents a strong argument that German air defenses caused considerably less damage to British forces than pilot error, malfunctioning aircraft, and bad weather. That we believed otherwise supports the notion that British bombing raids had forced Germany to transfer significant air assets to defend against them. Williams, however, found no evidence that any such transfer occurred. Actual results, Colonel Williams argues, stand in strong contrast to claimed results.

Biplanes and Bombsights: British Bombing in World War I - Stories about the Sopwith Strutter, Zeppelin, Dehavilland, Handley Page, General Hugh Trenchard, and Lord Rothermere

Biplanes and Bombsights: British Bombing in World War I - Stories about the Sopwith Strutter, Zeppelin, Dehavilland, Handley Page, General Hugh Trenchard, and Lord Rothermere
Author: Air University Press
Publisher:
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2017-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781549870941
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This study develops and substantiates a comprehensive evaluation of British long-range bombing in the First World War. Its findings run directly counter to the generally held opinion. Natural limitations, technical shortfalls, and aircrews lacking proficiency acted in concert with German defenses to produce far less results than those claimed.In broad brush, this study balances wartime claims against actual results as determined after hostilities. It also documents the cost, in men and equipment, of the bombing offensive waged by 3 Wing, Royal Naval Air Service, and components of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force--specifically 41 Wing, Eighth Brigade, and Independent Force, between July 1916 and the Armistice. The study's organization was based on the organizational scheme of Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland in their four-volume history of Bomber Command in World War II, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany. Maj Gen Hugh M. Trenchard's Independent Force, the major strategic force to undertake significant and protracted bombing operations in the Great War, levered into place the cornerstone of the postwar Royal Air Force and shaped its doctrine during the interwar years. It also conditioned domestic expectations concerning the offensive potential of aerial campaigns in any future conflict. The lessons supposedly gleaned from the Great War heavily influenced the progress of British military aviation during the 1920s and 1930s, underpinning RAF doctrines, expectations, and policies up to the initial phases of the Second World War. The subject thus deserves careful study in its own right. Fundamental discrepancies between the materials and conclusions reported in the January 1920 Air Ministry's classified evaluation of the Great War's long-range bombing offensive on the one hand, and those contained in seven volumes of evidence gathered firsthand by RAF intelligence officers who surveyed German-occupied territory immediately after the Armistice on the other, prompted an initial interest in this aspect of military history. Data from seldom-consulted records of the bombing study conducted independently by the United States Air Service complicated these differences. Subsequent examinations of RAF, Air Ministry, and other official archives brought even more contradictions to light.Contents * FOREWORD * INTRODUCTION * Chapter 1 * NO. 3 WING ROYAL NAVAL AIR SERVICE (JULY 1916-MAY 1917) * Notes * Chapter 2 * BRITISH BOMBING BEGINS * Notes * Chapter 3 * 41ST WING ROYAL FLYING CORPS (JUNE 1917-JANUARY 1918) * Notes * Chapter 4 * EIGHTH BRIGADE AND INDEPENDENT FORCE (FEBRUARY-NOVEMBER 1918) * Notes * Chapter 5 * EIGHTH BRIGADE AND INDEPENDENT FORCE OPERATIONS * Notes * Chapter 6 * POSTWAR ASSESSMENTS

The Baby Killers

The Baby Killers
Author: Thomas Fegan
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2013-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0850528933
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Just over a decade after the Wright Brothers’ triumph of powered flight, the conduct of war was changed for ever. Until the Kaiser’s Zeppelins raided British cities and towns, it had been unthinkable that civilian populations and property hundreds of miles from the battlefield could be at risk from sudden death and destruction. In the first section of The ‘Baby Killers’ Thomas Fegan charts the precise chronology of the air raids on Britain in this most thorough and fascinating work. From the start-point of the doom-laden prophecies of HG Wells and others, he describes the development of the German threat and the desperate search for answers to it. He analyses public reaction and assesses the effectiveness of the campaign as it progressed from airships to Gotha heavy bombers and, later, ‘Giants’. The second part of this superbly researched book features a gazetteer to the places bombed. The extent of the list, which includes Edinburgh, Hull and Greater Manchester, will almost certainly surprise most readers. Helpfully there are also comprehensive lists of memorials and relevant museums. The ‘Baby Killers’ provides a chilling insight into an aspect of The Great War which is all too often overlooked. Yet, at the time, these raids, while modest compared with those of the Second World War Blitz, shook national morale and instilled great fear and outrage. This is an important and highly readable work.

Taking Flight

Taking Flight
Author: Richard P. Hallion
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 655
Release: 2003-05-08
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 0190289597
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The invention of flight represents the culmination of centuries of thought and desire. Kites and rockets sparked our collective imagination. Then the balloon gave humanity its first experience aloft, though at the mercy of the winds. The steerable airship that followed had more practicality, yet a number of insurmountable limitations. But the airplane truly launched the Aerial Age, and its subsequent impact--from the vantage of a century after the Wright Brother's historic flight on December 17, 1903--has been extraordinary. Richard Hallion, a distinguished international authority on aviation, offers a bold new examination of aircraft history, stressing its global roots. The result is an interpretive history of uncommon sweep, complexity, and warmth. Taking care to place each technological advance in the context of its own period as well as that of the evolving era of air travel, this ground-breaking work follows the pre-history of flight, the work of balloon and airship advocates, fruitless early attempts to invent the airplane, the Wright brothers and other pioneers, the impact of air power on the outcome of World War I, and finally the transfer of prophecy into practice as flight came to play an ever-more important role in world affairs, both military and civil. Making extensive use of extracts from the journals, diaries, and memoirs of the pioneers themselves, and interspersing them with a wide range or rare photographs and drawings, Taking Flight leads readers to the laboratories and airfields where aircraft were conceived and tested. Forcefully yet gracefully written in rich detail and with thorough documentation, this book is certain to be the standard reference for years to come on how humanity came to take to the sky, and what the Aerial Age has meant to the world since da Vinci's first fantastical designs.

Anti-Submarine Warfare in World War I

Anti-Submarine Warfare in World War I
Author: John Abbatiello
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2006-05-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135989540
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Investigating the employment of British aircraft against German submarines during the final years of the First World War, this new book places anti-submarine campaigns from the air in the wider history of the First World War. The Royal Naval Air Service invested heavily in aircraft of all types—aeroplanes, seaplanes, airships, and kite balloons—in order to counter the German U-boats. Under the Royal Air Force, the air campaign against U-boats continued uninterrupted. Aircraft bombed German U-boat bases in Flanders, conducted area and ‘hunting’ patrols around the coasts of Britain, and escorted merchant convoys to safety. Despite the fact that aircraft acting alone destroyed only one U-boat during the war, the overall contribution of naval aviation to foiling U-boat attacks was significant. Only five merchant vessels succumbed to submarine attack when convoyed by a combined air and surface escort during World War I. This book examines aircraft and weapons technology, aircrew training, and the aircraft production issues that shaped this campaign. Then, a close examination of anti-submarine operations—bombing, patrols, and escort—yields a significantly different judgment from existing interpretations of these operations. This study is the first to take an objective look at the writing and publication of the naval and air official histories as they told the story of naval aviation during the Great War. The author also examines the German view of aircraft effectiveness, through German actions, prisoner interrogations, official histories, and memoirs, to provide a comparative judgment. The conclusion closes with a brief narrative of post-war air anti-submarine developments and a summary of findings. Overall, the author concludes that despite the challenges of organization, training, and production the employment of aircraft against U-boats was largely successful during the Great War. This book will be of interest to historians of naval and air power history, as well as students of World War I and military history in general.

The Origins of Strategic Bombing

The Origins of Strategic Bombing
Author: Neville Jones
Publisher:
Total Pages: 258
Release: 1973
Genre: History
ISBN:
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Beretter om udviklingen af den britiske strategiske bombedoktrin indtil 1918.

World War I Companion

World War I Companion
Author: Matthias Strohn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2013-11-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 147280709X
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A wide-ranging and incisive collection of articles covering all aspects of World War I, written by some of the leading academics in the field. World War I changed the face of the 20th century. For four long years the major European powers, later joined by America, fought in a life or death struggle that would topple the crowned heads of Europe and redraw the map of the Continent. It was a conflict unparalleled in its scale, which in turn fuelled devastatingly rapid developments in military technology, technique and innovation as the belligerent powers sought to break the deadlock on the Western Front and elsewhere. In the centenary of the outbreak of the conflict, 14 renowned historians from around the world examine some of the key aspects of the war, providing a wide-ranging analysis of the whole conflict beyond but including the stalemate in the trenches of the Western Front.

Warfare in the Western World, 1882-1975

Warfare in the Western World, 1882-1975
Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2014-12-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317489748
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In this companion volume to "Western Warfare, 1775-1882," Jeremy Black takes his analysis of modern warfare into the twentieth century. As before, a distinctive feature of the author's approach is the coverage of both land and naval warfare as well as conflict within the West and between Western and non-Western powers. Beginning with the British conquest of Egypt in 1882, this book goes on to examine the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Boer War and the Balkan conflicts leading to world war in 1914. A revisionist account of the First World War is followed by a discussion of Western expansionism in the period to 1936. Chapters on the interwar years and the Second World War lead on to a discussion of the retreat from empire and the advent of Cold War. The narrative closes with the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and a discussion of the limitations of Western military technique, doctrine and technology. Throughout, the themes of military change and modernization are brought into sharp focus and the revolutionary characteristics of the machination of war in this period are questioned. Jeremy Black offers a new and challenging interpretation of modern warfare that will be required reading not only for students of military history but for all those interested in the impact of war in the making of the modern world.