World War I: Analysis

On the eve of the World War I, no country was prepared for using aircraft or would have even thought about making an effective weapon of war. Several had experimented with dropping bombs from aircraft, firing guns, and taking off and landing from aircraft carriers, but no country had designed or built an aircraft specifically for war functions (Century of Flight). During World War 1, they had made many changed to the aircraft to make it create havoc on the enemy’s. They would add many weapons to the aircraft to make it a deadly air weapon. The would then haul many people and weapons onto the aircraft and shoot from the top of the sky, so no one could really protect themselves (The Air War in Europe 23). Once World War two hit, these aircrafts got more sufficient in making their weapons more deadly. Air warfare was a major component of World War II. It consumed a large fraction of the industrial output of the major powers. Germany and Japan depended on air forces that were closely integrated with land and naval forces. The aviators downplayed the advantage of fleets who were strategic bombers, and were late in appreciating the need to defend against Allied strategic bombing. Britain and the United States took an approach that greatly emphasized strategic bombing, and to a lesser degree, considered control of the battlefield by air, and satisfactory air defenses (Wikapedia). They both built a strategic force of large, long-range bombers that could carry the air war to the enemy's homeland. Simultaneously, they built tactical air forces that could win air dominance over the battlefields, giving assistance to ground troops. They both built a powerful naval-air component based on aircraft carriers, as did Japan; these played the central role in the war at sea (Angelucci 46). Before 1939, all sides operated under largely theoretical models of air warfare. Italian theorist, Giulio Douhet in the 1920’s summarized the faith that airmen during and after World War I developed