Neil Faulkner begins a short series on the history of airpower and its impact on the evolution of modern warfare.
Aircraft are perhaps the most iconic symbols of modernity. The conquest of flight had, of course, been a dream from the time of the Greeks, who had their myth of Daedalus; but only after 2,500 years was the technology, manufacturing skill, and scientific know-how available to realise that dream.
Immediately after the Wright Brothers made the first manned flight at Kitty Hawk on the North Carolina coast on 17 December 1903, there were military implications.
For sure, every nation had its share of bone-heads in their high command who remained blind to those implications. Britain had General Sir William Nicholson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, who, speaking for the Army, announced in 1908 that the naval and military advantages to be obtained from the use of aircraft would be ‘none at all’.
