The aeroplane is an enemy of the organized existence of the people. This sentences from the 1938 book ‘The Chosen Instrument’ by Captain Macmillan is not just a product of the interwar period’s fascination, expressed in both fiction and non-fiction, with (military) aviation and its role in any future war. It also reflects the very core of the assertions made by many at the time that air power alone would supersede the century old conventions of warfare.
Reality was different, however. In the face of many promises made by air theorists, airpower, now tried and tested over the decades, fell short of the once lofty predictions. Whether the First or Second World War, Korea, or Vietnam, airpower played an important but not necessarily pivotal role in each conflict.
In this video I look at this complicated history and explain how (western) air doctrine changed from WW2 all the way to Desert Storm.
