Giulio Douhet Quotes

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

From the day war conquered the skies, nothing could check its progress.

The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy's aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.

If you want to go anywhere in modern war, in the air, on the sea, on the land, you must have command of the air.

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.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

Air warfare is a shot through the brain, not a hacking to pieces of the enemy's body.

The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world.

The first lesson is that you can't lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can't win a war if you haven't.

Air power is indivisible. If you split it up into compartments, you merely pull it to pieces and destroy its greatest asset, its flexibility.

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.

Тhe battlefield in the air will be the decisive one

Nothing can stop the attack of aircraft except other aircraft.

The British were keen for 30 caliber guns, did not believe in daylight bombing. American experts said 30 caliber was not enough; we had to have 50 caliber, also said daylight bombing was right provided the planes attacked in formation, with 50 caliber guns.

Let us never forget this: since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defense of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.

Once the command of the air is obtained by one of the contending armies, the war becomes a conflict between a seeing host and one that is blind.

Carey wants proper air cover in case of war with Vermont.

We cannot fight air strikes with explosives.

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.

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

I was with a Navy F-18 squadron, and I know a single squadron could finish off the entire Sudanese air force in a day.

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

Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side which first employs air power as it should be employed. Germany, entangled in the meshes of vast land campaigns, cannot now disengage her air power for a strategically proper application. She missed victory through air power by a hair's breadth in 1940. . . . We ourselves are now at the crossroads.

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.