Winston Churchill Quotes

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of victory.

I have a mathematical certainty that the future will confirm my assertion that aerial warfare will be the most important element in future wars, and that in consequence not only will the importance of the Independent Air Force rapidly increase, but the importance of the army and navy will decrease in proportion.

To have command of the air means to be able to cut an enemy's army and navy off from their bases of operation and nullify their chances of winning the war.

Military history shows air action only cannot achieve the goal of defeating an enemy.

The function and Navy in any future war will be to support the dominant air arm.

Air power can either paralyze the enemy's military action or compel him to devote to the defense of his bases and communications a share of his straitened resources far greater that what we need in the attack.

Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side that employs air power as it should be employed.

Adolf Galland said that the day we took our fighters off the bombers and put them against the German fighters, that is, went from defensive to offsensive, Germany lost the air war. I made that decision and it was my most important decision during World War II. As you can imagine, the bomber crews were upset. The fighter pilots were ecstatic.

Air superiority is the ultimate expression of military power.

To conquer the command in the air means victory; to be beaten in the air means defeat.

The day may not be far off when aerial operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial and populous centers on a vast scale may become the principle operation of the war, to which the older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate.

Airpower has become predominant, both as a deterrent to war, and-in the eventuality of war-as the devastating force to destroy an enemy's potential and fatally undermine his will to wage war.

When I look round to see how we can win the war, I see that there is only one sure path . . . and that is absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland.

The colossus of World War II seemed to be like a pyramid turned upside down, and for the moment the whole burden of the war rested on the few hundred German fighter pilots on the Channel coast.

If I had one more division like this First Marine Division I could win this war.

Allied air power was the greatest single reason for the German defeat.

In order to assure an adequate national defense, it is necessary - and sufficient - to be in a position in case of war to conquer the command of the air.

Тhe battlefield in the air will be the decisive one

If we lose the war in the air we lose the war and we lose it quickly.

In the long run sea power will be no match for air power.

The development of air power in its broadest sense, and including the development of all means of combating missiles that travel through the air, whether fired or dropped, is the first essential to our survival in war.

There are two ways to fight the United States military: asymmetrically and stupid. Asymmetrically means you're going to try to avoid our strengths. In the 1991 Gulf War, it's like we called Saddam's army out into the schoolyard and beat up that army.

Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.

So the important thing in a military operation is victory, not persistence.

To use a fighter as a fighter-bomber when the strength of the fighter arm is inadequate to achieve air superiority is putting the cart before the horse.