The First Air Wars — North Africa and the Balkans, 1911-13

The most common explanation for the slow and often haphazard development of the Royal Flying Corps before and during the first world war has been that nothing was known of war in the air before 1914; that the first years of the war were the time of experimentation, of trial and error, when a theory of aerial warfare was developed, and during which the means to put that theory into practice was created. Certainly, the British had no direct experience of war in the air before that date and the military air service had been in existence for only a little over two years. But there had been, since the beginning of the century, a growing body of predictive and theoretical literature which attempted to define the role of the air weapon in future warfare.' It should come as no surprise that, given their distrust of theory, the military and naval authorities almost completely ignored this material. But what is perhaps surprising is that the same authorities should also apparently dismiss the experience of the first wars which made direct use of the air weapon, and during which some of the rudimentary principles of air warfare were evolved: the ItalianTurkish War of 1911-12 and the Balkan War of 1912-13. The purpose of this essay is to examine the air effort of the nations involved in those conflicts and to assess its influence on the development of the Royal Flying Corps

Distrust · Military history · Nothing · Operational level of war · Political science · Red Army's tactics in World War II · Sociology · Surprise · World War II · History · Law · Military History and Strategy · Philosophy · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

• The natural history of lions in North Africa and the relevance of their depiction in the “Lions Attacking a Dromedary” diorama

  Open Access•Amina Fellous‐Djardini, Naomi Yamaguchi et al.•Curator The Museum Journal•2023

  Add to list

• The Phantom Airship Panic of 1913

  Open Access•Brett Holman•Journal of British Studies•2016

  Add to list