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Article: Bombing
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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BOMBING
BOMBING.
By the end of World War I, aerial bombing remained in the primitive stages. There were German raids on London and American pilots saw action, but the conflict ended before bombing reached its full potential. However, the seeds had been sown for decades of postwar controversy over the role of air power. Central figures were the Italian Air Force officer Giulio Douhet, author of
The Command of the Air
(1921); Sir Hugh Trenchard, the commander of the first independent air service, Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1919 to 1929; and the American brigadier general Billy Mitchell, whose unbridled advocacy of air power, although it led to a court-martial, would be ...