Giulio Douhet Quotes
The one effective method of defending one's own territory from an offensive by air is to destroy the enemy's air power with the greatest possible speed.
Douhet, Giulio. The Command of the Air. Translated by Dino Ferrari, Coward-McCann, 1942, p. 53.
This appears to be the first public call for Anti-Ballistic Missile Weapons & Systems. To many it is surprising that in 1946, there would be concern about missile defense, however during WWII, the Germans, violating the laws of war, struck London and other English cities with V2 rocket—the first ballistic missiles. England had suffered many civilian casualties and missile defense was a high priority for them.
This quotation has significance for two reasons. First, Lodge was one of the leaders of the conservative isolationist wing of the Republican Party which generally only wanted to provide the military with weapons to defend the mainland. However, the technology of the airplane caused much rethinking. Americans had seen what German bombing had done to Spanish cities and Italian air power in Ethiopia. This followed by Germany bombing city after city throughout Europe. There were huge calls for antiaircraft guns to be placed around all American cities so that Americans might be defended from air attack. However, Lodge supported another strategy that was a first for America: retaliation. From this point forward, America would rely primarily on retaliation rather than massive defense until President Ronald Reagan proposed his ill-fated Star Wars defense scheme. The second significant factor is that the senator suggested preemption—the attack on a military air base is that threatens us. This appears to be another first.
New York Governor Hugh Carey made extensive use of state airplanes and was discovered to have 31 pilots on the state payroll:
The Egyptians had received the latest Russian planes and weapons and outnumbered the Israeli Air Force 3 to 1. Within a year, the entire Egyptian Air Force was virtually destroyed. See {606125} for his equally unrealistic assessment of Egyptian air defenses.
There were few military thinkers at that time who would agree with Goebbels on this point.
The Egyptians had received the latest Russian radar and missiles. It’s planes outnumbered the Israeli Air Force 3 to 1. Within a year, the entire Egyptian Air Force was virtually destroyed. See {605729}
The Seals who conducted the raid captured all the computers and documents that there were in bin Laden’s compound.
General Giulio Douhet was an Italian general and air power theorist. He was a key proponent of strategic bombing in aerial warfare. He was a contemporary of the 1920s air warfare advocates Walther Wever, Billy Mitchell and Hugh Trenchard.
