Aviation’s shift from a wonder to an instrument of total war

Aviation’s shift from a wonder to an instrument of total war

Ryan Evans

“More than anything, the airplane symbolized the promise of the future. Americans in this period viewed mechanical flight as portending a wondrous era of peace and harmony, of culture and prosperity. This was the promise of the ‘winged gospel’”. (Corn vii) As Joseph Corn presents that the Airplane caught the world in a state of wonder and amazement that was thought to bring peace and prosperity after World War II. It, however, was transformed into an implement of war that was capable of more destruction than any other weapon ever created. Two bicycle makers from Ohio started the movement that shook the world when they flew the first powered heavier-than-air flying machine over the sands of Kitty Hawk South Carolina on December 17, 1903. At first aviation was treated like religion as the nation celebrated the day of its creation with air shows and ceremonies commemorating the Wright Brothers. When Charles Lindberg flew across the Atlantic Ocean, he was an instant hero. People realized that, for the first time, air travel across oceans opened a whole new world of possibilities. The sky was the limit for the new possibilities and potential of aviation. Corn noted that it even went beyond general jubilation when he wrote: “The celebration of Lindbergh and his flight extended beyond parades, speeches, and public gatherings. Americans named babies, schools, and streets after the flier”(Corn p.23). Support of flying went beyond a general interest; the early years of flight captivated America.

Looking back to a night in 1944, a heavily populated German city sleeps only to be suddenly awoken by the menacing drone of over seven hundred aircraft engines flying overhead. The German city is full of civilians, of men, women, and children. It has schools, churches, shops, and dense clusters of homes and residential establishments. These innocent souls are at the mercy of the falling bombs that take away many of their lives, homes, and their community. Above the city fly a swarm of British Avro Lancaster Heavy Bombers. In each four-engine-plane is a crew of nine British men tasked to drop a payload of death on the unsuspecting German citizens. As the 700 planes approach over the city they release their bombs, totaling up to over a thousand tons of concentrated high explosives. As the bombs hit, the roofs of people’s houses are blasted into shrapnel and ignite into a wall of fire. The majority of the once proud, vibrant, and cultural German city is now engulfed in flames and flattened to a state of chaotic rubble. Experiences like these caused people to live in fear of the airplane.

This narrative is based on the attack of Dresden on February 13, 1944 but could represent the many German cites attacked. An account from Lothar Metzger, an actual survivor, paints an ever more gruesome picture of the carnage when she wrote:

“We saw the burning street, the falling ruins and the terrible firestorm. My mother covered us with wet blankets and coats she found in a water tub. We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.”1

All of this shows the tremendous destruction caused by the airplane when it was used as a weapon of war. Technology had been twisted to create immense amounts of death and suffering. Stephen Garrett summed up the historical event when he wrote: “Dresden was attacked by two waves of approximately 800 Lancasters and as a result burned for a week. Estimates on casualties vary widely, from a minimal guess of about 35,000 to a more drastic figure of 200,000”(Garrett 20). The effects of the firebombs burned and charred many of the bodies to a point where an accurate count was hard to come by. The grim effects of all bombings totaled even higher: “As to the destruction visited on Germany, it is estimated that over 500,000 German civilians lost their lives to Allied bombing. Perhaps another 1,000,000 received serious injury. Around three million homes were destroyed” (Garrett 21). One has to note that this does not include the number of people killed by bombs in the war in the pacific, or the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. The bombers of World War II demonstrated the awful consequences of the role of airpower in the role of total war and cost a great toll of human life.

This complete change of role for the airplane from a celebrated machine to a destructive horror is an important transformation. The airplane was an innocent wonder in its inception but has been transformed in the minds of the people who have in some way been affected by its wondrous destructive nature. How did the role and perception of this wondrous new technology change and can it ever be seen as the wonder it once was? Understanding our relationship to our technology is important. Knowing how society viewed the technology over time tells us the value and the potential that technology has to offer today. Society relies on aviation and its developing use still shapes the cultural perception of technology. These perceptions help shape cultural priorities. Understanding these changes is vital in knowing where it will go now. Knowing the story behind planes and how they developed will give the public a greater appreciation of what people now take for granted when they use the airlines to get to their destination. Flying is an amazing human achievement. It took intellectual cunning and the support of a nation to transform a flimsy wood and canvas contraption into the sleek metal workhorses capable of destroying cities and deciding the outcome of long bloody wars. Will society learn from its mistakes and concentrate on the peaceful offerings of aviation or will we use aviation to destroy cities and lives? Society needs to learn how to get past thinking of airplanes as a device capable of destruction and realize the beneficial value by sparking the optimistic fire of air mindedness of the prewar years. We must be mindful that the air force has built up an advanced arsenal of deadly war planes and learn our lesson from World War II that there is a great cost involved in using the airplane as a mechanism of destruction. The double edged sword of faster and deadlier air power could be advanced to create safer and more precise weapons with more control that has restricted the all out total war seen and used during the Second World War.

This thesis asks how has aviation moved from being viewed as marvel to a weapon of war in the eyes of society and what technologies are associated with causing that transformation? How did the national ideals of Germany and America in the prewar period develop the deadly war machines and how did the public respond to that change? Planes started out in the light of innocence for they were not dreamed as instruments of destruction that opened up the possibility for total warfare they spread. I believe that the perceptions did in fact change and the airplane clearly and distinctly moved to an amazing machine of marvel, wonder, peace, and hope to an implemented deadly machine of war. The transformation and advance in technology of airpower is a result from the needs of the military state and that technology developed and was accelerated due to the military needs of the state with the added addition of the love and support and excitement of aviation from the public. This shift of focus to the military aspects of the airplane fueled the development of technologies for the airplane because important political and military officials fully believed that the airplane could play a major role in war. Consequently, the airplane brought war into the age of total war where civilians were for the first time, put at risk on a vast scale by the tactics of strategic bombing. Because of this, the airplane exemplifies the public’s fear that technology will continue to develop for destructive purposes.

The Birth of Flight And The Winged Gospel

Humans have always dreamed of flight. During the Renaissance, Leonardo DA Vinci designed flying machines.2 Flying was achieved in the late 1700’s with the advent of ballooning. In the United States, balloons were used in the Civil War as observation platforms in the 1860’s.3 Ever since the world knew that flight was possible, it became an obsession met with great excitement. This passion found its wings when the Wright Brothers proved the skeptics wrong.

The Wrights later got a contract with the military that set the course of flight to develop into a key component of the military. The airplane however, even in its use with the military was not an object of destruction and was not involved with bombing. Instead, it was a reconnaissance platform that miraculously saved many lives with its aerial observation of troop movements and descriptions of topography of the battlefield. Aviation was not shining in the realm of the military but in the civil realm of wonder.

The first flight is now a national day of remembrance. It was civilian air flight that really caught the public’s attention. Each December 17th speeches are given at Kitty Hawk North Carolina in honor of the men who brought flight into the world.

More and more events kept flying in the news and continued to grapple the world’s attention. In his book The Winged Gospel, Joseph Corn writes: “Particularly after Lindbergh, December 17th became a day of public remembrance, made official when in 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated it as National Aviation Day.”(Corn 60) Corn gives one of the best examples of ideologies in which the nation embraced and marveled aviation in a limelight of peace. The fervor and excitement of aviation and the ideology built around the worship and belief that aviation would bring peace and prosperity is how Joseph Corn would define his term ‘air mindedness’. Corn uses this term frequently to describe the movement that grappled the world in the prewar period from flights creation up to the breakout of World War II and the lofty dreams society had thinking that aviation would solve world problems and create a batter future. Air mindedness is a term coined by Joseph Corn in is book The Winged Gospel. It basically means the attitude and drives to develop flight and the movement of embracing the culture of aviation. Author of The Rise Of American Air Power, Michael Sherry agrees with Joseph Corn that Aviation started out as a technology of peace. “Never viewed solely as a weapon, the airplane was the instrument of flight, of a whole new dimension in human activity. Therefore it was uniquely capable of stimulating fantasies of peacetime possibilities for lifting worldly burdens, transforming man’s sense of time and space, transcending geography, knitting together nations and peoples, releasing humankind from its biological limits” (Sherry 2)

Monumental events and advancements that pushed the limits of airplane’s performance and endurance captivated the world during the prewar years. One of the most famous achievements in aviation history was achieved by Charles Lindbergh whose solo flight across the Atlantic proved to the world that the airplane could in fact connect Europe with America. This discovery paved the way for commercial airline traffic across the Atlantic connecting the world by a network of air transportation which we now take for granted. On May 20th 1927, Lindbergh flew alone in his monoplane for 33 and a half straight hours. 4His plane was The Spirit of St. Louis manufactured by Ryan Aircraft. The engine cowling (nose) of his airplane had such a large engine that he had a periscope to see in front of him instead of front window. When he landed in Paris the city greeted him with a rush of excitement. Air mindedness can also be defined as the love and belief of the benefit of aviation. Corn writes, “The winged gospel, however, was always more than simply a belief in the airplane as the source of progress. Aviation was a religion. Like traditional faiths, its belief system gave meaning to existence and provided a grand design for future life. This faith not only could give aviators courage but they also could motivate air minded men and women to great efforts on behalf of the cause.” (Corn p.136) Corn continues when he writes:

Indeed, aviation was a kind of crusade for believers. They did whatever they could to foster the public’s conversion to the cause: they promoted flying as a means of travel and personal transportation; as a business and professional tool; as a military weapon; as catalyst to municipal growth; even as a source of inspiration for artists, writers and students. (Corn 136)

These evangelists for flight were dedicated to spread support for flight because they saw it as the technology that could change the world. It was because of the dedication of these people that flight came alive and soon became an integral part of society. In the early years of commercial aviation, the public ether feared or could not afford air travel as a form of transportation. The first commercial aviation generation flew in the low in the rough weather and people were at first afraid of to fly because of the safety. This problem was addressed by advancement of technology allowed planes to fly higher. Higher flight routes above the problematic weather allowed for a smoother flight and made flight more attractive to the public. It took a combination of ideas from engaged individuals and the advancement of technology to make advancements to aviation. These two factors are the key factors to aviations development in every aspect. It took groups of people like the aviation enthusiast to spread the positive word of aviation for people to embrace it and for it to develop further.

Joseph Corn felt very strongly that in the early years of flight it was idealized in an almost religious sense. Corn emphasized this point when he wrote “Other enthusiast voiced even grander prophecies, looking to aircraft as a means of achieving perfection on earth or even immortality, promises usually identified with more traditional religions.”(Corn 27) This strong support became a very important aspect of aviation. Air-minded individuals were always looking to the future. This forward looking approach allowed for planes to develop and adapt to the changing needs of society in a rapid fashion. Corn wrote of the importance of this forward looking attitude when he wrote: “Prophecy comprised a kind of creed for the winged gospel and provided the motivation for those who practiced this secular religion of technology.” (Corn 27) According to Corn, there was a very strong following of flight during the early years. I will take his point even further by concluding that it was because of this strong societal and cultural support for aviation that allowed for it to advance and develop its technology. Aviation could not have been perfected enough to become a platform suitable for use as a weapon without the strong popular support of society and its status as a cultural wonder. In the United States, this movement was very apparent. The airplane stood as an American marvel and during the prewar years it remained a peaceful wonder. Germany shared the same enthusiasm of wonder for the airplane but was driven by the motivations from its political system which later developed into the most feared air force in the world.

Germany’s Wondrous Encounter With The Airplane

Germany embraced aviation both politically and commercially early on. They became known for their massive zeppelin passenger blimps and their daring aerobatic pilots. Mass air shows raged in popularity all around the world and Germany was no exception. Spectacular aerial spectacles were put on attracting masses. In his book, A Nation of Fliers German Aviation and the Popular Imagination, Peter Fritzsche describes the mass turnout for air demonstrations in Germany during the mid 1920’s and early 1930’s.

If ‘big cannons’ such as Gerhard Fieseler, Gerd Achgelis, or Ernst Udet, whose aerial acrobatics, low altitude loops, and irrepressible clowning dazzled spectators, agreed to come, tens of thousands of curious sightseers pressed onto the meadows. Udet could pick up a handkerchief on the ground with his wingtip, and police reports indicate as many as 60,000 people were on hand to watch him perform in Bamberg on 25 April 1926. Sunday rallies sponsored by the cigarette company Bergmann in the summer of 1931 attracted up to 100,000 spectators. (Fritzsche 135)

After the defeat in World War One, post war Germany needed a stigma to latch on to and the technological advance of aviation became one foothold in reviving the German spirit. Fritzsche continued to highlight the success of Germany in the realm of aviation:

There is no doubt, however, that Germany’s aeronautical triumphs revised ideas about the ambitions and qualities of the nation. Aviation replenished active verbs: the airstreams had been conquered, the elements overcome, continents bridged...public response to the flights of the ZRIII, the Graf Zeppelin, and the Bremen indicated that national honor and national ambition depended more and more on the drone of airplanes and the whirl of motors. (152)

Aviation was a great outlet for nationalism in Germany. It was a modern technology in which the country could proudly rejoice in its technical achievements which in turn was used to symbolize the strength of the German government and its power standing as a nation. After its defeat in the First World War Germany longed to rise as a strong nation again. With the rise of the Nazis, the German civil air arm grew stronger with the strong support of the government and before long Germany was known for its amazing air transport blimps known as Zeppelins and their spectacular air shows. Unlike the United States, where airplanes were embraced by the individuals as well as the government, aviation in Germany was fed by the strong supply of nationalism and the obsession with becoming technologically advanced in aviation and the later following push by the NAZI party to gain an air superiority which developed the famed Luftwaffe (German air force). Peter Fritzsche agrees that nationalism was a strong drive for aviation:

“The result of all this self-congratulation was a nationalism that celebrated technology not merely as a passive register of German ability but as precisely the arena in which Germany could and would revive as a Global power. (Fritzsche 153) Germany saw modernity as a way to achieve power and it allowed them to develop its airplanes with support from the nationalist ideals. Peter Fritzsche acknowledges Jospeh Corn in his book A Nation of Fliers and makes a comparison of German airmindedness when he writes:

In the United States, ‘airmindedness’ was a nearly religious declaration of faith in moral improvements and civic prosperity, a happy, hyperbolic restatement of the American Dream. According to Joseph Corn, the “winged gospel” was mainly pacific and embrasive. It did not foresee brave, new political communities based on exclusion and hierarchy or impose novel geopolitical imperatives. In Germany, however, the elective affinities between innovations in technology and sterner modes of politics were more closely defined, more dangerously partisan. (Fritzsche 134)

Fritzche makes this comparison showing that the German people held the airplane in the same state of wonder but, it is more centralized in the workings of politics and the government. Fritzsche later goes on to mention that the success of the airplane industry and gives proof that the Third Reich will have the ability to compete with world powers in the future. Germany held wonder in flight where it became important for its commercial and national wellbeing. Germany held the airplane in such awe that they implemented it into their schooling during the mid 1930’s. “Nazi officials claimed that aviation taught German schoolchildren to think in three dimensions, a lesson which was a prerequisite to mastering the political responsibilities of the air age and subscribing to the global ambitions of the National Socialist Sate.” (Fritzsche 200) The strong support for aviation in both, America, Germany and Great Britain set the stage for the technology to develop so fast that it ended up outpacing the ideal for peace. The airplane became more and more powerful with each passing year. Fritzsche sums this up when he foreshadows the more deadly role of the airplane that first became realized during the end of the First World War:

“Lifting off from the face of the earth and surveying from the air, connecting contents in a day and bombing country heartlands in an hour, attaining faster and faster speeds and finally piercing the stratosphere, the airplane became one of the most powerful symbols of the age” (Fritzsche 134). The airplane remained very much a wonder throughout the prewar and interwar periods but the technologies changed in such a way to morph its role to a more militaristic future. Once Aviation had replaced its peaceful role society had to change its perception completely as aviation would soon rain death on civilians. The prophecies and support from society allowed for technology to develop rapidly for the airplane. Sherry explains that the support and prophesizing about aviation was a key factor in its development when he wrote: “Its realization, then, served as a powerful metaphor for heavenly aspirations and even, among the literal-minded, as the palpable vehicle for achieving them. Not surprisingly, prediction preceded innovation and ran far ahead of technology even after invention occurred” (Sherry 2). Without all of these focused ideas about the future of aviation, the technology of planes wouldn’t have developed at such an astonishing rate as it did. The technological developments went from uses for speed, transportation, spectacles and peace to a much more lethal means of purpose.

Technology’s Role In Changing The Face Of Aviation

Technology needs a stimulant of money and societal need or support to advance. The desire for planes to be used in roles of reconnaissance and as transportation quickly changed as planes became more and more advanced to the point where they assumed a different role entirely. Planes went from being a passive observer in warfare to a role of an active participant. If it wasn’t for all the development of the airplane itself during the times of peace the airplane would not have been developed enough to support a role as a war machine. Planes weren’t originally planned to be an offensive weapon. It first took the capability of technology to support the ideals of using the airplane as a tool of destruction and this advancement of developments was made possible from the support and the placement of the airplane as a wonder as it flourished in the early prewar years. Thanks to competition such as the numerous air races that pushed aviators and aircraft manufactures to the limits helped rapidly develop the airplane to fly faster, higher, and smoother than was ever imaginable.

Contrary to popular belief, civil aviation was advanced and developed before the military in the mid to late 1920’s. In his book, Air Power in the Age of Total War, John Buckley wrote:

The importance of civil aviation began to emerge when a new generation of airliners was introduced from the mid-to-late 1920s. While military aircraft continued to be wood and fabric bi-planes, the demands of efficiency, speed and performance dictated that airlines had to offer more to stay profitable. Many features later to be crucial to the development of military air power in the late-1930s were developed by civil aviation: cantilever wings; metal based construction; retractable undercarriages; navigation equipment; pressurized cabins- to name but a few. (Buckley 108)

These civil developments were advanced by the enthusiasm of society to embrace aviation. Achievements were celebrated as nationwide air races and competitions assisted in the development of planes as well as placing aviation in the limelight. The early airliners competed with each other ruthlessly to develop faster and more comfortable airplanes to gain an edge in the newly forming air travel industry. Air spectacles and competitions where intuitive aviators broke records pushed forward the development of technology.

Eventually the advancements of civil airplanes were translated over to military aircraft. The shape of fighters changed dramatically during the interwar period. The materials also changed allowing for airplanes to be more durable and easier to mass produced. “The wooden based bi-plane models which had become established in air forces around the world as a result of the Great War began to disappear to be replaced by all metal cantilever-wing monoplanes with high performance engines and dramatically improved navigation and flight control systems” (Beckely 109). All these changes made a profound impact on the way the airplane preformed and allowed for it to assume a more deadly role as a war machine. Civil aviation’s technological advancement was steady and important but, eventually the development of military technology took over as being the driving force of technological advancement in aviation.

The military was vital in the progression in aviation technology. “Without military involvement, airplane and airship development would have floundered once the initial public interest over the achievement of the Wrights and subsequent aviators had subsided.” (Buckley 39) Military advancements soon took precedence over civil aviation and started advancing at an astonishing rate. Thanks to the need for aircraft that could meet the high demand and specifications of the military aviation went through an amazing transformation. The Improvement rates are staggering. Buckley described the changes in great detail:

Between 1918 and 1935 engines had improved from around 225hp giving speeds of 125mph, to 500 hp producing speeds in excess of 200mph. Yet within three years the Messerschmitt BF109 and The Supermarine Spitfire had horsepower of over 1,000, speeds measured at around 350 mph, significantly increased operating ranges and, perhaps most importantly, between three and four times the armament of the older bi-plane fighters. (Buckley 110)

These astonishing improvements allowed for planes to wage warfare at a whole new level. Fighter planes came a long way from flying at 100 miles per hour with two machine guns that at first shot up the propeller. Planes could now chase and fight each other at over three hundred miles per hour and fight with up to six machine guns.

There were many technical challenges when developing a plane that could fight. Airplane weapons themselves took a lot of development to develop into the efficient fighters of the Second World War. The first use of weapons in aircraft started out when a pilot of an observation plane fired a revolver at the enemy plane during flight. This led to the idea of mounting a machine gun on the nose of the airplane. This was effective, but the pilot ran into a severe problem: the machinegun would fire directly into the propeller which would usally rip it apart. An invention had to be made to inhibit the machine gun at certain moments when the propeller passed in front of the field of fire. A lever was attached to the propeller and it deactivated the gun when the propeller passed in front allowing the gun to be used safely. When wood and canvas wings were soon replaced by metal it was possible to mount guns into the wings themselves allowing for additional firepower. Thanks to all of these incredible advancements, planes could fly higher, faster, and further then ever imaginable. These unpredictable achievements forced the military to draw up entirely new tactics and methods in which to use air power to it fullest potential. Unfortunately, the combination of the new aviation and technologies ushered in the era of total war where planes would not only shoot down other planes but soon drop bombs on the world below.

Pre-bombing Ideas Aviation’s Shift To A State of Horror

The idea of using bombing as an actual tactic of war developed early but was neglected to be used in optimal force until the start of World War II. The development of the warplane took a mixture of influence of society and technological advancement. Sherry describes this when he wrote: “The warplane had its social history, but a complicated one that went beyond national interests or parochial influence, peculiar conceptions of war, and war itself. Air war had its origins in the complicated relationships among fantasy, patterns of technological improvisation, and the immediate context of war and peace”(Sherry 3). The airplane wouldn’t have developed into a war machine without the blending of the societal and technological factors. Bombing started out primitively where fighter planes would lob hand grenades or explosives out of their planes down onto the ground. It developed slightly from there but the technology of World War One inhibited the capability of the bombers as well as its uses. Thanks to the total reworking of airplane technology, bombing had come a long way since the First World War. By World War II airplanes had developed into massive platforms that could hold large loads of bombs and equipped to drop them accurately on their targets. These new bombers were also outfitted with turret guns to protect themselves from enemy fighter threats. The first time that America considered long range strategic bombing was in November 28, 1917 when Maj. Edgar S Gorrell made an intensive study on the benefits of this new aerial war tactic. He saw it as the best solution to getting an edge on the stalemate of trench warfare. He warned the allies that the Germans were developing this capability and that their key industrial complexes were in jeopardy from attack from the air (Johnson 208). The Great War showed the world the positive impact of aerial reconnaissance. Johnson pointed out that air power in the great war actually taught the military that airpower would not solely lead them to victory like the prophesies of the great power and the potential of air power of the early years had predicted. In his book, Wingless Eagle U.S. Army Aviation Through World War I, Herbert Johnson wrote: “For better or worse, the First World War did not teach what the airmen wanted to hear-that their weapon was the key to future military victory. It did confirm the immense value of the Air service to the army’s combat operations and, by doing so, it tied army aviation more closely to the ground force command structure than the Air service officers accepted” (Johnson 215).

During the 1930’s and 1940s the military turned to the ideas of strategic bombing of Giulio Douht and this capability of using war power for the offensive turned out to be a very lucrative military position. (Johnson 216) The more durable metal airframe allowed the airplane to be loaded with heavier payloads that the old wood and canvas frames could not. This added weight allowed for armament like guns and bombs to be added to the planes. In this effect, aviation started to adapt a more destructive role in warfare as their task was shifted form observation and air support to a deliverance system of bombs. These changes to the role and function of airpower in warfare are the key causes from shifting the perception of the airplane away from the initial wonder.

As the airplane became more and more lethal, issues arose on correct ways to use its power and what limits should be placed on its capabilities of destruction. In the early stages of planning out the concept of bombing the idea of bombing the heart of cities was out of the question and morally infeasible. How did society go from an action that it once thought morally wrong and taboo to become a mainstay essential method of warfare?

General Billy Mitchell was one of the forerunner advocates for strategic bombing. He claimed that airplanes could be used to sink ships in war and proved it when they tested the theory out into practice as they sunk a stationary ship by aerial bombardment. Mitchell was not given as much credit as he deserved and many of his ideas were disregarded. The future of bombing seemed bleak until a sting of military conflicts resurrected the tactical dream like a phoenix rising up from the ashes.

Before the breakout of World War II the world got a glimpse of the destructive power of bombing as the fascist axis powers tested out their planes in Ethiopia and in the Spanish Civil War. Roosevelt was appalled by this and pledged to never utilize this horrible method. On September 1st, 1939, President Roosevelt spoke out against aerial bombing in response to the axis use of aerial bombing.

“urgent appeal to every Government which may be engaged in hostilities publicly to affirm its determination that its armed forces shall in no event, and under no circumstances, undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations…the ruthless bombing from the air of civilians…which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousands of defenseless men, women and children, has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity.”(Pisano 333)

Ironically two years later, the United States engaged in strategic bombing operations at a much greater scale than the axis ever did. It was a pledge that Roosevelt broke as thousands of American bombers were being built and sent to flatten German cities.

It was thought that anything and everything should be used to put a stop to the N.A.Z.I’s.

Airpower finally took the plunge into total war when limits and restrictions to its destructive capabilities were removed. Options on how to use air power as a weapon were brought to the table and discussed. It was thought that an effective way to use airpower as a weapon was to unleash poison gas upon cites to kill its inhabitants. This idea was immediately rejected for it was thought to be unethical and dangerous. The haunting memory of the use of mustard gas in the First World War led to the decision never to unleash the horror of gas warfare on mankind ever again. It is ironic however that they would forbid using gas but allow for fire bombing that would not only kill the population but also burn and demolish the establishments and infrastructure of the society. The new idea of attacking city centers paved the way for a completely different strategy. Buckley wrote that:

Deliberate targeting of civilians declined as a strategy in the 1930’s but reemerged during the Second World War in the RAF once it proved impossible to bomb anything accurately. Although the Allied governments never admitted it openly, from early 1942 onwards first the Royal Air Force and then latterly the United States Army Air Force pursued a policy of area bombing. In effect this was a policy of deliberately destroying urban centers and their populations in an effort to cause disruption and chaos in the enemy state and thus undermine the war effort. (Buckly 5)

This new strategy contained both strategic and moral consequences. The collective damage of carpet bombing finds no boundaries between combatants and noncombatants for the bombs that fall can not distinguish between the two. The policy of aerial bombardment changed in the entering years of world war two. Peter Fritzsche quoted Jeffery Herf in his book explaining Herf’s reactionary modernism theory in relation to aviation. “The flyer represented an ‘age of transition…the new man, the man of the twentieth century.’ Flying was more than a triumph of science and functional rationality” (Fritzsche 84). The idea of flying went beyond just its technical mechanical nature; flying defined humanity and the human drives and aspirations. At first aviation reflected the human spirit of curiosity, but it soon bled into the human tendency towards violence.continues to explain that when these negative and dangerous human characteristics of violence spread into the planes it destroyed to optimistic prophases of flight. “it was ‘the living expression of a powerful life force’ that contradicted pessimistic prophesies about ‘the decline of the race.’ It signifies ‘far more than the merely technical. Its soaring flight stake out the districts of the cultic world’. It is indispensable from the restrictions on German rearmament imposed by the Versailles Treaty” (Fritzsche 84). As bombing was implemented into the arsenal of the military and seen as a vital military method its strategy was planned out to effectively serve a helpful purpose in war. Bombing was developed into a possible way to hold peace among the nations of the world by using air power as a deterrent.

Bombing as a Deterrent

The airplane was thought to be able to be used to keep the peace as a controlled method of deterrent fairly early on. The understanding that in order for this strategy to work, society overlooked that the airplane must be capable of causing great destruction in order to work as a deterrent. The thought was that the superior technology of flight itself would reign powerful enough to be used as means of keeping nations in check. Thought of ways to hold peace through non violent and miraculous means were attractive ideas in the early years of this perception. In his book The Winged Gospel, Joseph Corn brought up early perceptions of deterrence in 1909 when he wrote:

Airplanes, prophets thought, would usher in an era of perpetual peace, deterring aggressors and even eliminating the conditions that cause war. This was perhaps the most enticing promise of the winged gospel. To a 1909 commentator, the age of aviation would be the ‘age of peace’ because only ‘fools’ would dare fight when armies employed flying machines. Assuming that anybody could inexpensively manufacture airplanes, he expected small countries to possess as many machines as the largest nations, thereby preventing the latter from bullying the former. The mightiest nation in the air age would thus fear the smallest and weakest country, guaranteeing the deterrence of war. (Corn 37 )

The expectation that airplanes would be the tool that would prevent wars and keep the world at peace was a very real ideal in the early 1900s. The world soon found that instead of keeping the world at peace, aviation actually worsened the collateral cost of war and eventually led warfare into a state of total warfare. It went from being a deterrent to a deliverer of destruction that heightened the attrition of wars and erased the boundaries of warfare. When the skies were taken and used in war it changed the face of war where no place remained safe from its effects of war.

Contrary to Corn’s ideals, the problem with aviation being used as a deterrent was that not all nations had the resources and technological know how to produce an air force that could compete with the other nations or even create an air force at all. As seen in history this belief that airplanes would be the ultimate deterrent that would keep the world at peace did not hold out to be true. It’s true that airplanes were used as an instrument of war, but many smaller nations did not have the support or economy to produce as many airplanes. Also the airplanes themselves did not in a sense prevent wars they actually fought and escalated the severity of the war pushing war into the state of total war which is my central argument that the changing of airplane technologies pushed airplanes into an instrument of total war. Ideas that Airplanes would be used to make peace and to end wars were on the minds of people in the 1930’s. Clifford Harmon had a dream that never turned into a reality that airplanes could be used to peacefully end world conflicts. Corn wrote that: In 1929 he proposed to the League of Nations what he called the “Silver Wings of Peace.” To accomplish this, the organization would enlist the leading male and female pilots of the world to serve in the League. In the event of an international crisis, the Silver Wings pilots would fly over the quarreling nations and drop peace leaflets. This Harmon thought, would end the crisis and restore peace (Corn 59). It is ironic how this conception got morphed into using deadly bombs. The generals and military officials thought bombs to be the answer. During the 1940’s, bombs were thought to end wars and bring peace by destroying enemy moral and their will to fight. The role of the airplane here has changed from a messenger of peace and compromise to an actual deliverer of destruction. Many nations developed airplanes hoping that this action would prevent others from engaging them in war, but this attempt became futile. Airplanes do not prevent wars but instead, airplanes are the very instrument that can escalate a war into total war. Total war is all encompassing in which the entire society is affected by the conflict and civilians are put at risk. By using airplanes in warfare, the boundaries in which war can be carried out are expanded to a point where the home cities and the civilian population are put at risk. It was once thought that the fear of this would prevent the nations from action but instead, it pushes them to act offensively by attacking the other’s city and supply lines to prevent being attacked itself. Deterrents don’t work well if it involves active conflict. Later, nuclear weapons become the world’s deterrent which put the world at constant fear of M.A.D or Mutual Assured Destruction. The dynamics of how nuclear weapons keep the world in balance may be relevant but is not what I want to focus on. I am interested in focusing on the power struggle of how the nations in World War II used airpower to harm each others moral and will to fight as well as to slow their enemy’s material industrial machine. Stephen Garrett took a look at the basis of this early form of deterrence in his book Ethics and Airpower in World War the British Bombing of Cities:

What we had here was an early confirmation of the basic notion of deterrence as it later came to influence the debate over the West’s nuclear strategy toward the Soviet Union. Deterrence in its essentials was a doctrine not for the use of air power (in this case nuclear missiles and nuclear bomb carrying aircraft) but for persuading one’s enemy not to initiate this particular form of air warfare. The premise behind an effective deterrent strategy was that if one could inflict an equal or greater degree of damage on a potential instigator of nuclear warfare, that country would be deterred from beginning a nuclear exchange, assuming it was capable of some fairly basic cost-benefit calculations. (Garret 196)

The equality of weapons was thought to keep the world at peace for each country would fear a counter attack with the same horrifying weapon. The United States would not attack the Soviet Union because they feared the counter attack by the Russians with the same amount of force. The problem with this point was that the Germans could not match the amount of bombing potential as the allies because of a lack of resources yet this didn’t cause them to back down. According to Garrett, if the law of deterrence actually worked the Germans would have backed down in recognition that it was outgunned by bombing power but this didn’t happen due to Germany’s strong will to win the war. This brings up an interesting point that the theory in which the reasoning of bombing was supposed to work out fails in practice. Knowing this it is clear that bombing must serve another role during World War II other than deterrence. This role may be many objectives including but not limited to: decreasing enemy moral, destroying enemy infrastructure, and eliminating natural resources. All the reasons mentioned proved work except for deterrence which had been proven to be ineffective. The allies did not threaten Germany with the use of bombing to comply with its demands. Instead the allies ordered strikes on German cities and towns in order to strike at the heart of the German war machine. Garret explained how Germany attempted to use the notion of deterrence to prevent further attacks on its cities:

The decisive point about these German attempts to dissuade London from a generalized assault on their cites was the lack of the essential ingredient of credibility in their deterrence strategy once Britain came to realize that the capacity of Germany for serious aerial retaliation against the British islands was limited. This does not mean that the suffering inflicted by the Blitz was not deeply felt, or that the effect of the German rocket campaign in 1944 was lightly discarded. It is simply to say that London recognized that there was little, if any, real balance between the amounts of destruction that Germany could visit on Britain compared to that which Bomber Command was able to inflict on the Germans. Under the circumstances-and in accord with one of the basic principles of deterrence-there was little incentive on the part of Churchill and his advisors to restrain the area offensive. (Garrett 197)

As you can see here, the attempt to use the method of deterrence failed. Britain instead of being persuaded by the German effort to prevent the British to attack German cities, Germany actually served as a catalyst to British bombing efforts. One of the reasons it served a backwards effect was that Germany had far fewer bombers than Great Britain and could not deliver the same level of attack power. Another is that their action provoked England to retaliate and to put more effort to end the war. This is not saying that the German blitz on London was not devastating; the fires in downtown London caused great suffering for the inhabitants of the British mainland. Germany later developed new technology in which it sent rockets fitted with warheads into Britain. These V-1 rockets launched from France where they rocketed over the channel and crashed blindly into England blowing up whatever happened to be in its path. The Germans tried everything from bombing London to shooting rockets to deter attacks of its own cities. Despite these desperate attempts to use air power as leverage and as a deterrent, it ended up to not work the in the way it was planned. The use of bombing as a deterrent soon led the world into an age of total. With the use of strategic bombing air power pushed warfare in a state of total war where war became all encompassing.

Total war is a state of warfare that has total effects that reaches beyond the combatants. The entire nation is put at risk and becomes involved. Airplanes are a key factor to making total war possible for now attacks can come from the sky which can kill and effect the civilian population that was immune in previous wars. Wars used to be fought quite differently. The armies would leave their homes and meet on a remote battlefield usually isolated from their home front. If the battle was close to home, civilians were not a target. In a state of total warfare anything can become a target whether directly or indirectly. Falling bombs can not differentiate between civilian and soldier. Buckley introduced Arthur Marwick who is a historian in the 1960’s who studied the impact of military airpower on society:

“For Marwick, total war caused mass destruction and devastation; caused great strain on social and political structures within societies; called for the mobilization of previously disadvantaged groups in war production; and had a profound psychological impact on state and society. More controversially, Marwick argued that total war provoked significant and long lasting social change.” (Buckley 13)

Marwick is describing how total war had great impact on social change for it mobilized the populous and involved everyone by either putting them at risk or straining their labor or economy to sustain the production and operation of aerial warfare. Total war invokes stress and mobilization of all parts of society and can induce psychological effects such as fear that affects the society as a whole. Buckley finishes up on that point by reveling the core basis of Marwick’s argument is that “The role of air power in shaping the development of total war was crucial and perhaps was the most significant weapon in this process.”(Buckley 13) The key point here is that aviation is the most significant technology that brought about total war. Without aviation it would have been hard to reach a state of total war. According to Buckley, Marwick was right about the fact that airpower is a key player in total war:

“Air power clearly exhibits many of the aspects that Marwick indicated, and that we have come to regard, as illustrating total war- targeting civilians, bringing the war to the home front, the fear of air attack and the apocalyptic vision of air power that predated the fear of nuclear holocaust by a generation. Air power was therefore a clear and direct cause of total war in a physically destructive sense.” (Buckley 13)

This passage gives a great description on what total war entails. In a state of total war civilians are no longer safe, the home front becomes integrated and involves if not in the middle of the fighting, and a constant fear from an air attack affects all sides. Airpower took a lot of resources and manpower to utilize. Buckley realized this and described how extensive the airplane was in the aspect of production:

Airpower demands mass mobilization of economies, industries and scientific establishments to a degree hitherto unknown. As a measure of a state’s ability to wage total war, air power was by far the most useful yardstick, as only a few were able to meet the challenge of fusing technical know-how with mass production in this most demanding of fields. (Buckley 169)

Airplanes were expensive and took a lot of technical expertise to manufacture. For this reason, there was a limit to who could produce warplanes on a grand scale. Many of the smaller European nations did not have the manpower or the resources to construct an air force making them reliant on their allied countries that had one. Total war took massive amounts of support of the people and the mechanisms of the economy of production. The machine of production necessary to produce the war plane was driven by civil society. Civilian workers, mostly women, labored endlessly in factories to produce airplanes for the war. Their labor connects to them to the conflict and in the world of total war they are viable targets vulnerable to attack. This vulnerability spreads even further than just the workers in the factories to include all of the inhabitants in the city. Society knew all to well the dangers of an air attack and many precautions were taken especially in Britain.

Although not everyone shared Britain’s excessive concerns, significant measures were taken before and during the war to save society from collapse by providing defense against air attack. The evidence of the new totality of war, precipitated by air attack, was there for all to see. Gas masks, air raid shelters, evacuation of children from cites, air raid wardens, blackout procedures, anti-aircraft gun batteries, barrage balloons, searchlights, air raid sirens, bomb damage, clear-up duties and many other measures were forced upon society by air attacks, or even the threat of such assaults. (Buckly 15)

These defensive measures provided some comfort to the general public and were better than no defense at all. Despite all the efforts of the victimized cities, the bombs still fell and the citizens knew that they were still in great danger no matter how great their defenses. Public bomb shelters became a sanctuary where everyone could take refuge. The bomb shelters were also a place in where class barriers were broken for upper and lower class alike all took class together under the same shelter. One of the major bomb shelters in London was the tube train tunnels of the London Underground. People would stuff into the tunnels for hours with blankets waiting out the terrible ordeal unfolding above. The all inclusive danger to all people one of the roots of total war. Civilians and combatants alike are all put at risk and involved in the great conflict. John Buckly strongly believed that the airplane is the dominate technology that contributed to total war and it was the technology that needed the greatest amount of technological resources to create. “No other weapon required the economic investment and technological know-how required by modern war than aircraft. In many ways air war was the epitome of total war, an icon of a specific age in warfare and human civilization” (Buckly 13). Total war only occurred because of the technological advancement of military technology allowing for instruments such as the bomber to drag the world into a state of all encompassing total warfare.

Technologies Needed For Bombing

In order to implement strategic bombing in actual practice there were a lot of technological hurdles that needed to be tackled. Pilots needed to be trained, radar needed to be developed, bombsights needed to be perfected, planes needed to be manufactured and tested and leaders had to morally decide to make decisions on how and where to use the bombers strategically with many lives on the line. All these technological advancements needed to happen in order for bombing to be used Pilots needed to be trained, radar needed to be developed, bombsights needed to be perfected, planes needed to be manufactured and tested and leaders had to morally decide to make decisions on how and where to use the bombers strategically with many lives on the line. The development of the bombsight was vitally important in allowing for the bombers to deliver their bombs with great accuracy. There were two basic types of bombsights developed in World War II each working slightly different. Falconer went in great detail about the two bomb sights describing how they worked and how they differed

The RAF used two basic types of bombsight in its bomber aircraft: the vector sight and the tachometric sight. The first (vector sight) had been in existence since 1918, with modifications, and required the bomb-aimer to compute and then feed in the data before the attack for the aircraft’s speed, altitude, the ballistic performance of the bomb, and estimated wind speed and direction. On a small reflecting screen in front of him the bomb-aimer referred to a sighting cross made either from crossed wires or lines of light. …The vector sight was simple and effective, but it was only as accurate as the data fed into it and only if the aircraft made a straight and level approach to the target. (Falconer 110)

It is important to understand that the vector sight had been as early as late World War I and was modified to be more accurate to be used in World War II. The second sight is the Tachometric sight which is slightly more complex in the fact that it can compensate for more factors such as wind velocity and direction.

The tachometric sight was a very different device to the vector type in that it computed wind velocity and direction automatically. A motorized sighting telescope was focused on a stabilized glass screen mounted beneath it. Linked to a gyro-stabilized platform the telescope enabled the bomb-aimer to view the target during the bombing run…Because the movement of the telescope relative to the platform was relayed to the sighting computer by the gyro stabilization system, the computer in turn generated a stream of signals which were relayed to the pilot (or directed into the autopilot if it was engaged). These were displayed on a directional indicator on his instrument panel for corrections to be made in the aircrafts heading, thereby maintaining the sighting graticule accurately over the target. As the aircraft neared the target the angle of the telescope on the bombsight progressively reached a vertical position. Once it had reached the release angle calculated by the sighting computer, a pair of electrical contacts closed to form a circuit and the bombs were released automatically. (Falconer 110).

Knowing about the technology that made bombing possible and how it works can provide better insight in how bombing developed and what technology was necessary for it to be used. It also gives a clear and accurate picture about the methods used by the bombardiers. Unlike the bombers today they did not have the sophisticated equipment our bombers use today such as laser guided smart bombs or inferred target imaging.

Werrell’s book on the power and use of bombers in WW2 support the claim that the airplane has been transformed from a peaceful marvel into what then and now is a flying platform of death that has the awesome power to level cities and cause massive destruction. It has also grown to become a strong political tool in which is still widely used as a deterrent today. Beyond the use of deterrent bombing carried out a strong effect on the reaction of the victimized nations public. Garrett speaks a lot about bombing as a tool of deterrence in both a military and political means. The moral and attitudes of the public effected the nations production of vital goods of war. The technology was there and it was a great destructive force and the question stood is it morally acceptable to use this instrument of death?

Ethical Debate Surrounding Bombing And Moral Justifications

Once bombing became a prominent form of aerial warfare it was looked at extensively on its moral basis of justification. Was it morally sound to bomb people from the sky or had ethics been completely ignored? All warfare itself is immoral in the fact that people are killed and property and land is destroyed. War is brutal and always has been, even before the airplane had been brought into the equation. What really brought bombing into the limelight for ethical scrutiny was the extent of civilian deaths it caused which society was not prepared to deal with. This brought up a debate on how to control, limit, or make sense of bombing.

Charles Lindberg disagreed in the use of the airplane for warfare and destruction for he saw it immoral to yield such destructive potential which would lead to destruction.

We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow. I believe the values we are creating and the standards we are now following will lead to the end of our civilization , and that if we do not control our science by a higher moral force, it will destroy us with its materialistic values, its rocket aircraft, and its atom bombs-as it has already destroyed large parts of Europe (Lindberg vii).

Lindberg sees airplane bombers in a negative light due to their function and the immoral actions of that function leading to destruction and death. He described the bomber factory creating the bombers as being an unworthy pursuit. He labels the bomber as a “hellish monster” which he attributed to “killing people by the thousands each day as they destroyed the culture’ of Europe” (Lindberg 9). Lindberg was not alone, as many people started to see the negative impacts of bombing as their cities were bombed and their loved ones were put at risk.

The civilian suffering was substantial on both sides during World War II, but it was not at all equally proportional. The Axis powers were hit much harder, for the Allies hit a greater proportion of cities and with much greater force than they received by the Axis powers. Why would the Allies hit the Axis much harder than they had received if it was retaliation for the blitz of Great Britain? If it was a straight retaliation the allies clearly used a force far beyond the amount of force dealt to them in a point of excess. Between the fall of 1940 to the spring of 1941, the Blitz resulted in 50,000 tons of bombs being drooped on British cites which caused 40,000 civilian death. (Garrett 12) The fact of the matter was not that it was used for retaliation but instead used in the grand strategy to bring about an axis defeat by crushing enemy moral as well as destroying their infrastructure and assets as well. Stephen Garrett realized the unbalance of force used in bombing amongst the two sides and concluded that appeared to be a logical move militarily for England to carry out the offensives.

“The decisive point about these German attempts to dissuade London from a generalized assault on their cities was the lack of the essential ingredient of credibility in their deterrence strategy once Britain came to realize that the capacity of Germany for serious aerial retaliation against the British islands was limited. This does not mean that the suffering inflicted by the Blitz was not deeply felt, or that the effect of the German rocket campaign in 1944 was lightly discarded. It is simply to say that London recognized that there was little, if any, real balance between the amounts of destruction that Germany could visit on Britain compared to that which Bomber Command was able to inflict on the Germans. Under the circumstances-and in accord with one of the basic principles of deterrence-there was little incentive on the part of Churchill and his advisors to restrain the area offensive (Garrett 197).

Garrett discusses reasons behind what motivated the British to want to fully bomb Germany based on what Germany did to Britain. Britain itself thought that it was justified in bombing Germany based on the attacks on the British cities but it took out retribution almost a little to far. Britain retaliated against Germany to a point where it may have been a point of excess for it reaped more harm than Germany had or could have done to Britain. The proverb of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was being used here but in this case Britain took a much larger tooth from Germany than the tooth that was taken in the first place. Garret describes it in such a way as Germany stirring up the hornets nest when he wrote: “it was not hard to argue that after all the Germans had indeed sowed the wind and now were to reap the whirlwind” (Garrett 12).

The British were appalled that the Germans would attack a place of such historical importance such as London. It made sense that the Germans must be punished for attacking England and the only logical way to do this was through bombing. Churchill came to this same conclusion: “In effect Churchill’s argument seemed to be that in order to sustain the nation’s morale, it was necessary to do unto others as they were doing to the British” (Garrett 12). The core reason for British bombing was summed up when Garrett wrote, “The concept of the shattering of the German people’s morale, and thus of Germany’s will or ability to continue the war, was enshrined henceforth as one of the guiding premises of British bombing policy” (Garrett 13). Enemy morale was thought as an important driving factor of enemy military effectiveness as well as the state of its infrastructure.

In retrospect, there was feeling of great remorse after the bombing of Dresden but there was still believed justification behind the actions. In an August 1945 interview with U.S. Air Force General Ira C. Eaker, he rationalized the great cost of human life in Dresden with what he thought to be justification of just cause.

Eaker offers a calculus and an ideology to justify the bombing: ‘I deeply regret that British and U.S. bombers killed 135,000 people in the attack on Dresden, but I remember who started the last war and I regret even more for the loss of more than 5,000,000 Allied lives in the necessary effort to completely defeat and utterly destroy Nazism’ (Pisano 349).

Many involved with the bombing operations thought that the bombing were a necessary measure needed to win the war. Through bombing it was thought that the Allied forces would accomplish great success in slowing down the drive of the enemy and would make a great difference in the outcome of the war. The actual effectiveness of the methods of strategic and carpet bombing was put into question. Buckley brings this debate up in his book when he writes:

Acceptable behavior in war is largely determined by contemporary attitudes within both the belligerent and neutral societies. The fact that controversy still surrounds the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, to say nothing of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, implies that western civilization was and is uncomfortable with such actions. In part this may be connected with the persisting belief that area bombing did not work and was unnecessary to defeat Germany and Japan. But it is surely also wrapped up with notions of civilians being non-combatants and therefore not being legitimate targets in war. (Buckley 5)

In reality, despite bombing efforts the war still raged on, but the world became tainted by a state of total war. This unclean morality infected the world where civilian lives were being taken in the name of the war effort. Where did the moral lines of civilized battle go? What now are the boundaries of morality with the introduction of the horrifying act of strategic bombing? To start to unravel these questions we must first take a look at what the society’s perceptions and reactions to the bombings was during that time.

Society’s reaction and attitudes towards bombing depended largely on the information dispersed to them by their governments. Many civilians were unaware of the extent that enemy civilians suffered from attacks. Many were led to believe that bombing entailed attacking only of targets strategically important to the military. This fog of misinformation did not stay in place for long. The fog was partially lifted when cites were directly attacked such as the Blitz on London and the citizens saw first hand the destructive carnage of bombing and begun to understand that no one was safe from the bombs. This unfolded during the attacks on London and other British cites during the Battle of Britain. The social implications of the air attacks of the Battle of Britain are great. Many families evacuated their children out of the city due to the terrifying experience of living through the unsettling air raids.

Despite the great cost of the damage of property and businesses, the greatest cost of the Battle of Britain was mental. Citizens in England lived in fear of attack and had to incorporate the very real risk of an air raid into their daily lives. Spotlights were put up with nightly watches. Gas masks were distributed. The subway tunnels served as mass air raid shelters for the people. German bombers often attacked at the dead of night when people were in their beds and vulnerable. The wail of the air raid siren would whine and the city would awaken in a shrill panic as people rushed to the shelters. Germany later developed new technology in which it sent rockets fitted with warheads into Britain. These V-1 rockets would be launched from France where they would rocket over the channel and crash blindly into England, blowing up whatever happened to be in their path. During the Battle of Britain and the attacks on the British mainland, the public was quite aware of the destructive capabilities of bombing however, most of the public were naive to the actions of their own nations bombing endeavors.

During the campaigns of the heavy strategic bombing of Germany, the public knew very little about the actual details to implement in strategically bombing the enemy. They were usually unaware of how many noncombatants were killed and how many nonmilitary buildings and transportation infrastructures were destroyed in the process. Many of the public were told fabricated lies that only essential military targets were to be hit. Garret described the situation in great detail in his book:

It has been recognized as well that a great many in Britain, in fact a majority of the population, seem to have had little real sense of what the area bombing of Germany actually involved. Official government spokesmen, of course, went out of their way to deny that Bomber Command was attacking German Civilians. The steady claim was that British Aircrews were targeting strictly military objectives. As late as 1944, a public opinion poll revealed that 75 percent of those questioned assumed that Bomber Command was being directed solely at military targets. Only one in ten was aware that bombs were falling on other sites as well (e.g. the center of German cities) (Garrett 89)

This confusion about the actual actions of bomber command brought about false beliefs and perceptions. If the public knew the truth about the practices of strategic bombing, their reaction would be very different and the issue of immorality of it would be directly addressed. An example to this would be the Vietnam War, when the public was enlightened about the truth of the actions and atrocities of combat through the media which strengthened the antiwar movement and public protest. It is difficult for the public to strongly react against an immoral situation without knowing the facts about the extent of its existence.

When faced with unfortunate facts, some people tended to ignore the details about bombing and just blindly accepted that it was a useful method. Garrett elaborated on this point when he wrote:

Perhaps more people should have been able to infer the actual strategy, but as one analysis on the subject has it, people preferred to feel rather than know about strategic bombing. In any event it remains that ignorance about the specifics of the air war was seemingly widespread among the British people virtually to the end of the war. (Garrett 89)

This public ignorance is what held strategic bombing out of the realm of moral questioning and public scrutiny. Support may not have been as strong if the citizens knew the details of strategic bombing and the morality of bombing may have been called into question. Further yet, there is another argument that the cities are defenseless thus completely helpless victims to the fury of bomber attacks is rebuked by Buckley when he writes, “The argument that such workers are ‘undefended’ surely collapses with the development of anti-aircraft guns, high performance interceptors, night-fighters, and radar” (Buckly 6). With this additional information does this make strategic bombing more or less moral. Some would say no based on the differential of force. The amount of of offensive force utilized by the attacking bombers outweighs the amount of defensive force used to protect the city. The city can be put at a disadvantage when attacked by the bombers in different conditions such as at night or from high altitude. In order to defend from a night bombing attack, spotlights are needed to detect the bombers in order to direct antiaircraft battery fire at the invisible planes hidden in the shroud of darkness. Night fighters were rare to come by and difficult to use since this was before the days of infrared imaging and computer target acquisition. The Pilots would have to find their targets in the dark, their accuracy was diminished greatly, providing a buffer for the town. Despite the majority of public ignorance there did exist a group of people who were strongly opposed to bombing due to their strong moral convictions and other reasoning.

However there are outliers who believe in the preservation of the wonder of aviation. Charles Lindberg saw the negative direction Aviation was headed and saw the potential destruction the technology could yield. Lindberg yearned for a better use of the technology. He saw the true moral value of aviation in carrying people and cargo across oceans to connect the world. Lindberg sees airplane bombers in a negative light due to their function and the immoral actions of that function leading to destruction and death. He described the bomber factory creating the bombers as being an unworthy pursuit. He labeled the bomber as a “hellish monster” which he attributed to “killing people by the thousands each day as they destroyed the culture of Europe.” (Lindberg 9). Throughout history there seems to be a constant strive for advancement in more speed and power. At different times these goals are rationalized for different reasons. Lindberg stated that an airplanes edge on speed and power in combat translated to a better chance of survival in warfare. Michael Sherry introduces the concerns of Will Irwin, the author of The Next War: An Appeal to Common Sense from 1921, who made predictions and about the implications of using developed aerial bombardment in future wars. He saw the potential to wipe out cities of their inhabitants and the crumbling of morals. Sherry provides quotes from Irwin’s book displaying this:

If you bayonet a child, you see the spurt of blood, the curling up of the little body, the look in the eyes…But if you loose a bomb on a town, you see only that you have made a fair hit’ the ‘gallant’ airmen he talked to during World War I ‘were thinking and talking not of the effects of their bombs but only of ‘the hit’ Beyond that, ‘they closed their imagination-as one must do in war. (Sherry 32)

This passage reflects the impersonal detachment the pilots and bomb crew have from the situation. They bombers are detached so much from the situation they fail to realize the consequence and the human suffering caused by their actions. This is also a true reflection of the technology of bombing itself. The technology detaches individuals from morality. Violence in aviation is a rigged machinelike process that detaches the men in uniform form feelings of compassion for the people they kill and the suffering they cause. The removal of ethical guidance from the technology of bombing poses a severe problem, for without ethical restraint bombing can run amuck. Bombing has the perfect of causing mass devastation without regard to human life. The airplanes shift from a peaceful wonder to a weapon not only changed the role of the airplane, but it also changed the nature of war itself. Aviation was a key factor in driving the world into total war and completely changed the face of warfare forever. The Allies did most of the bombing during the war while the Germans wore more often on the receiving end of bombing. In order to understand the concept of bombing completely it is necessary to take a look at the German side of bombing as well as the allied, for the German bombing strategy was much different than the allies.

German Bombing Policy

Just as Germany was a major player in the development of civil aviation, the nation was seen as one of the leaders of military air power due to its advanced technology and strong central national backing. This account of the German air force during World War Two gives me an alternate viewpoint on the use of military airpower. The Germans invented the use of Air Power in the tactic of Blitzkrieg and developed a fine and advanced air force. Germany also produced highly specialized aircraft in the 1940s such as the first jet fighter used in combat, the ME 262. It also goes into detail on what costly decisions Germany made on the use of its air force that cost them a loss in the war. I feel looking at airpower from a different perspective will present new understanding on its uses and role to society. Germany used its airpower differently in which it saw it important to use dive bombing and also bombing on the defensive.

Unlike the Allies, Germany did not develop heavy four engine bombers so its strategies for bombing had to utilize medium to light bombers. These medium and light bombers had limited range yet were still effective in attacking Allied targets. What made the greatest difference however the use of precision attack. These precision attacks could individually target important units and eliminate them with great accuracy. Germany perfected the tactics of specified accurate dive bombing strikes to make the most of the capabilities of their aircraft. Germany is amazing because of the support that the fascist government put into aviation and how they celebrated airpower throughout the war despite the destruction their planes were causing. The Luftwaffe was often thought more powerful and potent than it really was and was feared. Germany’s tactics and uses of its Air force were very different from those of the allies, and it developed different planes and technologies. Even though the Germans also used high altitude bombing like their allied counterparts, they focused their program on pinpoint precision bombing in which they were able to advance the accuracy of bombing. Despite the differences between the methodology of bombing both methods equally contributed to the airplane causing a set of destruction of total war.

The Germans focused on a bombing tactic that was the opposite of the massive heavy bombing strategy that the Allies focused on. Instead of massive area bombing, the Germans developed and utilized dive bombing which attacked small individual targets with great accuracy. The Germans found this tactic efficient for taking out specific targets of interest with great accuracy. The reasons the Germans devoted their strategy to using this tactic were two fold: they possessed the technology for it and the ideal airplane to use as a tool specifically for dive bombing and secondly they perfected this tactic and had integrated it into their air war strategy. Dive bombing was ideal for the German state because of their limited resources that became even more limited as the war progressed due to the loss of ammunition plants from Allied strategic bombing. Dive bombing required fewer bombs, and because of the higher degree of accuracy, fewer bombs were wasted. The Allies method of strategic carpet bombing, wasted a lot of bombs. In carpet bombing, the objective is to put as many planes over the general area of the target and drop countless bombs so that the entire area is destroyed. Only a handful of these bombs actually make contact with the intended target and the rest are wasted.

In his book, Luftwaffe A History, Harold Faber analyses the reasons Germany pursued the strategy of dive bombing he wrote: “Precision bombing ‘was quite natural to Germany, since it was in keeping with the continental concept of the conduct of war,’ and as this concept applied to air warfare, it called for maximum precision in hitting a militarily significant target-normally a relatively small area-with a minimum of damage to the surrounding countryside. Spetzler continues, “Hitler, who repeatedly spoke up for the abolition of the bombardment war, was just as eager as Goering to spare the civilian population of both sides the horrors of air warfare insofar as possible” (Faber 150). This perspective shifts the moral blame of the atrocities of aerial bombing to the British and the United States, for it shows that Germany used medium and light bombing and tried to reasonably spare civilian lives, while the US and Britain pounded and leveled entire German cites with no respect for civilians in the line of fire.

The Allies were able to carry out this tactic because of their great amounts of resources and heavy bombers. Germany did not have any heavy bombers that could compare with the heavy bombers of the Allies. The Luftwaffe did not have any bombers with four engines. Four engines are required to carry enough bombs on each plane to truly carry out an effective carpet bombing. Germany had a fleet of two engine bombers which it utilized in strategic bombing missions, but these bombers were limited in range and bomb carrying capacity hence decreasing the bombers overall carrying capacity. In order to compensate for these facts, Germany turned to dive bombing. Dive bombing was a great alternative that did not require large expensive bombers. In fact all you needed for dive bombing were small specialized double or single seat planes that could carry one or two bombs.

Germany had a great fleet of small fighters and was capable of producing small war planes. As a side note, some of the best German automobile companies today such as BMW used to produce fighter aircraft. The BMW insignia is actually a spinning propeller. Germany had the industrial might to churn out a plentiful fleet of small planes allowing a great potential to create a massive fleet of deadly dive bombers. It was soon found that it would be easy to adapt to build a plane to specify in the task of dive bombing. The plane that was recruited for the job was the JU-87 Junker Stuka dive bomber. The Stuka quickly proved that it was the ideal plane for the task and excelled in accuracy. The Stuka was greatly feared by the allied army. Allied tanks rolling on the ground were sitting ducks for the bomber. It was nearly impossible to shoot down these small nimble planes before the victim was blown up. The plane would spot the tank and would dive straight down at the vehicle, releasing its bombs at the last moment before it actually collided with the target. The plane would climb to safety and the bomb would be lodged directly on the top part of the tank. These direct hits were devastating. The tank may have had a chance if it was a high bomber drop where the bomb would hit somewhere in the vicinity, but the dive bomber is different because it drops the bomb right on top of its targets for maximum effectiveness.

The implications of dive bombing and Germany’s feared JU-87 Junkers Stuka dive bomber meant that was a perfect solution for the German war machine and its aerial strategy. In comparison to the well established bomber commands of the British Royal Air Force and the American Army Air Corps, the Luftwaffe’s bombers lacked greatly in size and number. The actual technical terms and specifications are explained by Faber in his book. “The bomb carrying capacity of the German bombers was relatively low, one 550lb. bomb for the Do-17; four 550lb bombs for the HE-111 (Faber 149). According to Faber the German bombers could not deliver the same amount of firepower in load capacity or achieve the same long range as the Allied bombers. The fallowing is an excerpt from his book, Luftwaffe: A History, Harold Faber explains the motivation and reasoning for the Third Reich to adopt alternative methods of bombing such as dive bombing.

Pinpoint bombing, with the dive-bomber releasing its load directly over the target, seemed to promise a high degree of bombing precision and appeared to be exactly the right method for Germany’s situation. For Germany, in the words of the Luftwaffe command hierarchy, was so limited with regard to raw materials and gasoline that her production capacity and, in turn, her war potential, simply did not permit the construction of sufficient numbers of heavy bomber fleets. She had no choice but to limit herself to medium and light bombers with the highest possible degree of hitting accuracy. (Faber 149)

Some historians argue, that because Germany’s limited resources was a fact of many that contributed to the downfall of the Nazi’s. Many of these academics feel that strategic bombing had a very real impact in the course of the war and was significant to the outcome while others disagree. The other camp believes that while aerial bombing helped the number of planes and capability to carry out a stronger attack, it was not as big a factor as compared to military planning and strategy with use of ground and naval forces. Whether or not Germany lost the war because of its lack of bombers is unclear, but it is certain that the use of airpower by both Germany and the Allies became an important tool that had influence on areas such as public morale, and it also had the potential to drain resources and destroy supply lines. It is also clear that when a nation loses control of the skies there are very real consequences that coincide with that.

Bombings Failure To Serve as a Deterrent

Despite the high hopes that bombing would ultimately solve and win wars, it turned out to only add an escalation of destruction and it failed to achieve a swift victory. The prewar theory of Mitchell and Douchat was proven to be flawed. Strategic Bombing wasn’t the end all answer to solve the problem of war. It was effective but not the ultimate answer as they had predicted it to be.

“In both Europe and Japan, the prewar American strategic bombing theory failed in practice. To make bombing work in Europe, the AAF had to rely on the escort of fighter and radar bombing, and in Japan on new tactics and techniques. The bombing campaign against Japan was a tremendous tactical and technical success, especially when compared with the Allied campaign against Germany. It inflicted more damage with much less effort and cost within a shorter period of time.” (Werrell 241)

In other words bombing and the total war development and use of aviation as a military machine needed developed technology to go along with it in order to be used and the only way this technology could be mustered was for society to support and drive research and production for the development of the bombers and air technology so that it can function in the war. The input of resources did not amount to a an output of total submission to the enemy. Instead it was found that it did in fact work to damper moral and to slow enemy movement and production. Later in the course of the war bombing was used in the Pacific theater and was found to be even less effective. “Despite this success, the bombing had no significant effect on the Japanese economy, since the factories it destroyed were already in decline or idle because of a lack of materials. In that sense, the bombing campaign against Japan achieved a futile victory. On the other hand, strategic bombing did have an enormous psychological impact: it clearly demonstrated to Japanese leaders and the public alike that the empire was helpless before the American war machine, and was on the verge of being utterly destroyed by it. Without a doubt, the bombing had great impact on Japanese morale and did influence Japanese decision makers.” (Werrell 241) The effect on moral proved to be obtainable in most of the bombing operations. In the end, bombing represented a significant part of combat in World War II and left a mark of destruction spewed all across the continent. The tally of the grim effects of bombing ended up at “As to the destruction visited on Germany, it is estimated that over 500,000 German civilians lost their lives to Allied bombing. Perhaps another 1,000,000 received serious injury. Around three million homes were destroyed.” (Garrett 21) Whether effective or not in the course of winning the war the truth of the matter is that bombing caused a great number of death and human suffering for both sides.

Further Development And The Continuation Of The Horror

Aviation has continued to grow more and more technologically advanced with each passing year. Thanks to the efforts of aviation advocates and public support for aviation, civil aviation is very strong today. More and more advancements have trickled down from the military over to the public sector to uphold the wonder of aviation. The question however remains that where is the heart of aviation today? Is the heart of aviation still lie in the military complex or has aviation achieved its state of wonder that it originally seeked in its early years. The fact of the matter is that the cutting age technology of aircraft all belongs to the military. Looking back at the staggering advancements in World War II it is amazing to see the progress of technology.

“By the time of the Second World War the technological race had become even more pronounced, with radar and radio-assisted bombing becoming crucial to success or failure. Radar was a key advantage for the British in 1940 and the lack of it was a direct cause of Japan’s catastrophic defeat at Midway in 1942. In the same way, the technological side of the strategic bombing campaign was pivotal to success and failure. Increasingly more sophisticated and better equipped aircraft were produced in an attempt to win operational advantages.” (Buckley 18)

Military involvement was essential for the production of air power according to Buckley. The capabilities caused vulnerabilities and fear such as carriers and long range bombers extended the range and impact of attacks. The fear of air attack grew very real despite the unrealistic possibility of those attacks actually logistically and practically being carried out. That fear was very real and was attributed to the capabilities of a new technology that had not yet been comprehended to a point which a counter could be thought of.

Even in the USA, far removed from most of this process until the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the 1960’s, the fear of air attack grew to incredible proportions in the interwar era. The possibility of Japanese carrier-borne air attack from the Pacific, or German air assault from basses acquired in South America, however far fetched and remote war considered actual strategic threats (Buckley 39).

Technical aspects of bombing and the technologies that allowed for it to occur are connected to the fear that is attached to those technologies. Throughout World War II air power developed into a mature weapon of war. The nature of warfare has changed slightly from the all out strategic bombing of the Second World War. Air Power is thought to be used as surgical strategic strikes that are supposed to be decisive and accurate. In reality however, these attacks still have room for error and have ended up destroying intended casualties. The course air power has taken since World War 2 illuminates a deadly trend of the use of destructive force from the air maintaining the airplanes role as horrifying weapon. The airplane remained a horror after World War 2 subsided and it increased in its deadliness.

Despite the horrors of bombing experienced during the Second World War, bombing was continued and intensified in the wars to follow. It was just utilized in different ways and techniques but it still remained a deliverance of death and destruction. Dominick Pisano analyzed the raw numbers of bombs dropped in World War 2 and in Vietnam and the results are staggering.

During all of World War II, The United States dropped a total of about two million tons of bombs in all theaters, including the strategic bombing of Europe and Japan. From 1965, when General Power gave his prescription for painless victory through air power, through 1973, the United States dropped between 7.8 and 15 million tons of bombs on Indochina. (Pisano 345)

The difference of these numbers are shocking especially when considered that all the bombs dropped on Vietnam were all concentrated area of Indochina while in World War II that total number was spread out over an entire continent. There is however a situational difference. The majority of the targets in the Vietnam war were areas of jungle where the enemy was perceived to be rather than highly industrial city centers such as World War II. These numbers do speak truth about the increase of the use of air power for military means and the continuation of support and advancement of the methods of aerial bombing. During Vietnam, the use of napalm was used to burn acres of the jungles in order to eradicate the Vietcong resistance. America continued to believe that air power was the ultimate answer for military success however despite America’s superior aerial firepower and strong air attack power it was not very effective in achieving a victory in Vietnam. The intricate tunnels and deep jungles shielded the Vietnamese from many of the air attacks and the nature of jungle combat prevented a clear cut method of effectively using airpower. By the late 1960’s the airplane had reached a level of deadly potential never before imagined with new armaments far more destructive than its predecessor.

“Because one of the distinguishing features of the warplane as an instrument of genocide is the dissociation it offers from its own effects. The interior of the plane does not even seem to be in the same universe as the victims on the ground. Divorced from the carnage it wreaks, the warplane becomes an icon of power, speed, beauty, and technological ritual.” (Pisano 346)

The airplane has been attached to the acts of slaughter but the plane itself is seen as a representation of power removed from the associated destruction it causes. In a way it is the bombs that reign the destruction, not the airplane that dropped them. The airplane in itself is a technological marvel that can be used as an instrument of death but in itself it is a technological wonder that has achieved high speeds and incredible height above the world at a rate that amazes the observer. The jet planes capability to fly at astonishing heights and cruise the air faster than the speed of sound in itself is a feat of wonder. Despite the amazing feats of the airplane the horrors of bombing carried over to effect the publics reaction as the public was exposed to these horrors through literature and film.

Aviation Reflected through Film and Literature

Film and literature had a real effect on the American publics reaction and perception of aviation. The book The Airplane In American Culture edited by Dominick Pisano explores this issue and concludes the expression of aviation through literature and films does in fact have a noticeable effect on the publics perceptions of aviation. A revolution of novels in the 1960’s formulated public response to strategic bombing with the release of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. “The warplane, that characteristic weapon of America’s endless postwar wars, had to be perceived as a loathsome machine. By 1969, Vonnegut was able to assume that many of his readers would respond to the aerial killing machines not with wonder but disgust and revulsion.” (Pisano 347) Vonnegut brought readers a vivid picture of what victims endured in bombings which paralleled the napalm drop attacks in Vietnam. This negative perception was emphasized even further when the horrifying images of napalm was brought to the silver screen in movies such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Forest Gump, all of which depict a very moving and horrifying imagery of napalm drops on the jungles of Vietnam. The sight of an entire tree line bursting in balls of a fiery inferno engulfing the entire area and everyone present into a incinerating wall of fire can’t help but inflect feelings of horror of the airplane.

Pisano makes mention of the shift of focus on the moral perception of aviation in films and novels from the 1940’s to 1960’s. According to Pisano, the general role of movies and novels in the late 1940’s was to focus on popular support of World War II in order to legitimize the Cold War’s use of Air Power for deterrent. Movies in the 1960’s highlight the horror of bombing in order to get people to revolt against the war in Vietnam or at least to raise public awareness of the horrors of bombing. Aviation has been supported by society in film as it articulates its military role in society. Movies are a great reflection on society’s perception of aviation. Movies such as Top Gun and Flight of the Intruder focus heavily on the military aspect of aviation and how it is deeply engrained in war even to the present day. The display of the destruction capabilities of the airplane on film display to the pubic shedding the airplane in an image of warfare as well as a technological marvel. Most of the civilian population have little knowledge or exposure to military aircraft except from what they see through movies and the media. The media has a lot of power in how the airplane is received by the way in which they portray aviation.

Rising From The Ashes: The Return Of Wonder In Aviation

Through the Second World War, Aviation has changed to be seen as a horror and has continued to develop into a much deadlier weapon as time progressed. Bombing technologies have advanced to be deadlier and more accurate which sometimes limited the amount of civilian casualties but at the same time delivered a stronger destructive capability militarily. Airplanes have been seen in countless arenas to not only to be dangerous but as a weapon. Modern events such as September 11th, the crash of the Concord, and the bombings of the middle east have spread a negative light on flight. It needs to be recognized that flight is beneficial to our world and can serve as a wonder. George Monbiot doesn’t think so. George Monboit is a writer for a Manchester Newspaper called the Guardian strongly believes that the airplane is a social and political harm. He argues that the airplane continues to be a destructive technological tool in society as it continues to serve as a deadly weapon with the military, it destroys the environment, it allows for cultural imperialism, and drains government spending.5

His cynical look at the progress of aviation highlights some interesting points on how aviation still remains a powerful weapon of war and how it is harmful for the environment but does this mean that society views it as a horror? I would like to say no. Aviation has grown to a point where it has opened up the world with endless possibilities in the realms of travel, recreation, science, and emergency response. Thanks to aviation, we are free to visit almost anywhere in the world quickly and efficiently. Like the early wonder years where aviation was a great spectacle modern air shows such as Oshkosh and many others like has revived the fascination of aviation once again. Oshkosh is the largest air show in the United States that occurs annually. Dominck Pisano believes that Oshkosh is an example of how aviation is still viewed as a wonder.

Each year in August, upward of three quarters of a million people congregate at Oshkosh to see every kind of aircraft imaginable: military aircraft of both World Wars; airlines from the 1930s; air racers of all vintages; homebuilts of every type; ultralights. Also part of the festivities are air shows with the world’s best performers-wing walkers, parachute jumpers, solo aerobatic pilots, and teams of aerobatic aircraft. “Oshkosh,” as it has been come to be known, has grown steadily in popularity during its forty-year history and is a testament to the public fascination with flying for fun. (Pisano 69)

The wonder of the airline system has given the world the opportunity to travel and to mix with other cultures. George Monbiot sees this trait as a negative aspect but he has failed to see the endless benefits that have come from air travel. Air travel has allowed for increased trade and tolerance among people. The best way to learn about a place and its location is emersion. This emersion such as academic study abroad programs have been made possible by the airlines allowing students and scholars to gain a greater understanding of their cultures of study. The mixing of cultures allows for a better cooperation and understanding between the cultures which may prevent misunderstandings and future conflicts. In a similar way, airplanes have been able to provide aid to countries in need through the use of aerial supply drops. The Air Force has dropped vital food and medical supplies in areas of conflict that had been shut off from all other means of gaining supplies. In the same way, aviation has allowed doctors and medical personal to reach remote places in need quickly. In emergency medical situations, a patient’s life depends on the speed of their rescuers. In the United States the Civil Air Patrol is used to conduct searches of crashed planes. Searching for crash sites from the air is the most effective search method.

Forest fires are very common and very deadly to tackle from the ground. Airplanes have been invaluable as tools to help fight forest fires. Planes are loaded with fire suppressant chemicals or water to drop onto the blazing acreage of forest. Even though the airplane still remains a strong weapon in the military arsenal it has branched out to an array of peaceful and humanitarian uses. These beneficial uses of aviation have revitalized the airplane to the status of a wonder.

Civil aviation has been pushed past the limits of this world as civil aviation moves towards shooting for the stars as Burt Rutan continue to design new cutting edge aircraft pushing them to the limits of flight. Burt Rutan has built planes that have achieved flying around the world with the most efficient use of fuel and recently he won the X-Prize with his design of the first commercially funded spacecraft which has once again sparked wonder in general public in the subject of aerospace. The feat of Space Ship One has painted a promising future of Space Tourism in the future that has revolutionized the way the world has thought of Space travel. The thought of civilians getting the chance to witness outer space first hand holds an optimistic future and again highlights civil aviation and aerospace as a state of wonder.

Aviation technology has advanced rapidly and is at a point where planes are, faster and more deadly. The innovations of engines have allowed planes to speed several times faster than the speed of sound. Airplanes have been made so large that the carrying capacity dwarfs what was once thought impossible. The new Airbus 380 boasts the ability of carrying over five hundred passengers. These mammoth airplanes a marveled as amazing technological achievements. The question remains on the purpose of this technology. Is technology linked to destruction and military or can technology and innovation exist for a more peaceful existence. It is true that aviation has always had a strong root in warfare and continues to have a permanent place in the military yet more and more opportunities for civil aviation have been available. Aviation has seen some major setbacks recently. The Concord crash has put a full stop to a civilian supersonic transport. The Concorde can fly from Paris to New York in 3 hours and 20 minutes traveling at mach 2.04 over two times the speed of sound. It was grounded due to a fatal accident in 2000 and the effect of the September 11th 2001 attacks on the world trade centers which held a negative effect on all aviation. The grounding of the only supersonic civilian aircraft seems to dispel the dreams and aspirations of commercial aviation. A new supersonic passenger airplane has not been presented to replace the concord. Despite this damper on commercial aviation the technology continues to advance forward. Airbus has created the largest passenger plane in the world that can hold over 500 passengers. Boeing took a different approach when creating its plane of the future the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Boeing designed a plane that was extremely fuel efficient and constructed out of composite materials. Its sleek new Dreamliner will save airlines a lot of money on operating cost. The new public aviation rating of sport pilot has opened up the world of flying to the more general public allowing a limited license to fly smaller sport planes that are easier to fly and have become a great hobby by sport pilot enthusiast. The more aviation becomes accessible to the public, the more it reinstates its status as a wonder. Aviation air shows are very much alive today as they were back in the prewar days. As I mentioned before The Oshkosh fly-in air show in Oshkosh Wisconsin draws thousands of airplanes in a grand festival of aviation contributes to captivating the public with the wonder of flight. Other air shows operate all around the country that includes restored war birds to stunt pilots, aerobatics, and formation flying. These air shows are also used to display and to introduce the world to the new achievements of aviation technological achievements. The new models of airplanes are embraced and showcased driving the support for innovation for aviation. The support from the public inspires further development and the continuation of the dream of flight. Some recent advancements of technology include the new instrumentation now made available to the public. Instead of old round dial gauges, pilots now have the option of getting flight data and information from digital computer displays on their instrument panel. The Garmin G-1000 avionics allows for pilots to view a real time GPS map of the area with airports, traffic, terrain features, and city names all depicted with a depiction of their airplane allowing for them to know their exact position at all times. The GPS display works by obtaining the planes position by gathering readings from the Global Positioning Satellites. Options for XM Weather also allows for the pilot to view radar imaging of the surrounding weather. This digital instrumentation now provides the pilot with more information ever imaginable in-flight real time at the time that he needs it. The advancement of these and other technology continues to improve and perfect on the art of flying in efforts to make flying safer and more efficient. Aviation technology continues to advance as more and more planes are taking to the sky weather for civil or military means.

Aviation has developed rapidly and has served many purposes from the time of its conception. It is clear that the initial wonder of Aviation has moved to a militaristic horror as it became an instrument of total war. Once the airplane became a militaristic tool it aided in the creation of total war and stood as an ultimate tool of destruction. Despite it’s dominate role for warfare aviation has branched away from the military after the end of World War II as it entered the civil and public realm reclaiming its state of wonder. Today aviation exists in duel state of both wonder and horror that exist simultaneously. These two areas of aviation exist as a symbiotic relationship where the technology and advancements are shared between the two. The advancements made for planes by the military eventually feeds down into civil aviation. Planes are still used for war but now also exist in the public and commercial sectors as well. The future of aviation depend on the relationship between the planes of war and the planes of peace. The growing number of planes used for transportation will support our fast moving culture to support travel and commerce. Military planes are also advancing at a rapid rate with the advent of unmanned robotic planes (UAV’s) and faster, stealthier, and deadlier planes such as the new X-35 Joint Strike fighter. Aviation will continue well into the future for it is a reflection of both the horror and the wonder of society.

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2 Kemp, Martin. Leonardo Da Vinci Experience, Experiment and Design. Princeton University Press New Jersey 2006. (page 72) Leonardo Da Vinci made several drawings of gliders, parachutes and other various flying machines in the late 1400’s

3 Balloon use in the civil war was limited to scouting out battlefield layout and troop location.

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4Charles Lindbergh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh

5 Monbiot, George.”Comment And Analysis: A Weapon With Wings: The centenary of the Wright Brothers’ Flight Should be a Day of International Mourning” The Guardian Manchester 16 Dec. 2003: pg. 19. ProQuest.UW Lib., Seattle Wa. 5 April 2007 <http://proquest.com.>.