Page 106 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

106 airpower in 20 Century doCtrines and employment - national experienCes
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the prevailing view will eventually be replaced by a more balanced and less dog-
matic assessment of “The Place of Douhet”.
In “The Place of Douhet”, Higham criticised Brodie and poured scorn on the idea
that Douhet influenced British air strategy. He maintained that British air strategy was
home-grown and dismissed the idea that the development of air theory was a homo-
geneous international development. Yet he was forced by the rejoinders of Brodie
and Eugene Emme (“The Impact of Airpower”) to admit the close similarity between
Douhetian and other theories of air warfare; and was consequently reduced to describ-
ing the simultaneous emergence of strategic airpower theories in the USA, Britain and
Italy as an amazing coincidence - one analogous to the formulation of the theory of
evolution by natural selection independently by Darwin and Wallace. I believe, and in-
tend to show in this piece, that Higham’s thesis is inherently improbable: that consid-
erable cross-fertilisation did in fact take place, and could hardly have been prevented.
Higham emphasised the language barrier. He asserted that there was no prom-
ulgation of Douhet’s ideas in Britain before April 1936 - an article in “RAF Quar-
terly”. He overlooked or ignored an article in the same journal three years earlier.
He discounted the testimony of Robert Saundby (“Prophet of Airpower”) and JM
Spaight (“Air Power in the Next War”), and accepted, as do so many, John Slessor’s
emphatic denial of any knowledge or influence of Douhet’s ideas in the RAF (“The
Central Blue”).
Higham’s view still holds sway and has yet to be challenged directly and in detail.
Indeed, in a footnote in his “History of the Second World War”, Sir Basil Liddell
Hart provided powerful support for the Higham view when he categorically denied
that Douhet was known or influential in the RAF.
In his “British Air Strategy between the Wars”, Malcolm Smith argued that
Douhet’s ideas were known in Britain - but only to a few, only from the late 20s, only
superficially and they had no influence. In his “Strategy without Slide-Rule”, Barry
Powers dissented from the Higham view, citing the RAF’s great interest in the Italian
air force in the 20s and the close friendship between the two air ministers, Hoare and
Balbo. In his “Winged Warfare”, Michael Paris demonstrated that British aviation
was interested in, and had contacts with, Italian aviation before WWI.
Before examining in detail the question of Caproni’s relationship with British air-
men during WWI, I think it is important to recall that airmen everywhere (not least
in Britain) - and not only airmen - were greatly interested in, and impressed by, the
strategic bombing campaign that the Italians mounted against Austria in the period
1915-18 (and in which Caproni and his bombers played a very prominent part).
The campaign’s enormous impact on the airmen of the time is now largely forgot-
ten, for national pride and the Caporetto debacle later combined to dim memories
and lead to a downplaying of Italian achievements, especially in Britain and the US.
And, although Boone Atkinson (in “Airpower Historian”) has shown that the Ameri-
can concept of strategic bombardment - which originated in this period - was largely