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Some Notes On The Evolution of Air Doctrine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Bernard Brodie
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Extract

Military strategy is of all the human sciences at once the most ancient and the least developed. It could hardly be otherwise. Its votaries must be men of decision and action rather than of theory. Victory is the payoff, and is regarded as the most telling confirmation of correct judgment. There is no other science where judgments are tested in blood and answered in the servitude of the defeated, where the supreme authority is the leader who has won or can instill confidence that he will win.

Some modicum of theory there always had to be. But like much other military equipment, it had to be light in weight and easily packaged to be carried into the field. Thus, the strategic ideas which have from time to time evolved have no sooner gained acceptance than they have been stripped to their barest essentials and converted into maxims. Because the baggage that was stripped normally contained the justifications, the qualifications, and the instances of historical application or misapplication, the surviving maxim had to be accorded a substitute dignity and authority by treating it as an axiom, or, in latter-day parlance, a “principle.”

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , April 1955 , pp. 349 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1955

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References

1 See the one-volume edition of Douhet works in English called The Command of the Air (New York, 1942), trans, by Dino Ferrari. The title of the volume is that of the first essay contained therein, but others of Douhet's essays are also included.

2 See General Arnold, H. H., Global Mission, New York, 1949, p. 149.Google Scholar

3 In a published lecture, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor scoffs at the idea that Douhet had had any special influence on RAF doctrine, but his subsequent remarks unwittingly confirm that influence. He incidentally attributes to Lord Stanley Baldwin the dictum, “The bomber will always get through,” which, whether or not Baldwin ever actually voiced it, is certainly near the heart of the Douhet thesis. It is not remarkable that distinguished leaders should not know the source of their own ideas, since only professional scholars make a virtue of such knowledge. Slessor's lecture is reproduced in the Journal of the Royal United Service Institutions: “Air Power and the Future of War” xc, No. 595 (August 1954), pp. 343–58.Google Scholar

4 “Defeat of the Luftwaffe: Fundamental Causes,” Air University Quarterly Review (Maxwell Field, Ala.), VI, No. 1 (Spring 1953), p. 23.

5 I am indebted to my colleague, Dr. Raymond L. Garthoff, for my information about Khripin.

6 See especially Captain McDonnell, Robert H., “Clausewitz and Strategic Bombing,” Air University Quarterly Review, VI, No. 1 (Spring 1953), pp. 43–54.Google Scholar This article is a reply to the book by Admiral Sir Gerald Dickens, Bombing and Strategy–The Fallacy of Total War, in which Admiral Dickens argues that strategic bombing offends against the Clausewitzian doctrine “that the subjugation of an enemy is best accomplished by defeating its armed forces in battle.” Replying to this and like objections, Captain McDonnell asserts that what is needed is “a closer examination of Clausewitz’ principles”I For a more general effort to equate air force doctrine with the traditional principles of war, see also Colonel Dale O. Smith and Major General Barker, John D., “Air Power Indivisible,” AUQR IV, No. 2 (Fall 1950), p. 5.Google Scholar

7 For a more extended discussion of the relevance and irrelevance of strategic principles, see my ‘Strategy as a Science,” World Politics, 1, No. 4 (July 1949), pp. 467–88.

8 This entire exposition is contained within the opening chapter of his On War, though it is of course amplified throughout the book. The best and most available English translation of On War is that by O. J. Matthijs Jolles in the Modern Library edition.

9 See especially Foch, Ferdinand, The Principles of War, trans. by Morinni, de, New York, 1918.Google Scholar By one of those odd quirks of distortion that result from the handing-down of isolated quotations, Foch is often quoted in the literature today as having asked the question, “De quoi s'agit-il?”—“What is it all about?”—usually interpreted as showing his profound concern with the object of war. Another quoted remark of his is “War is not the supreme aim, because after war there is peace.” See, for example, SirSlessor, John, Strategy for the West, New York, 1954, p. 9.Google Scholar In such quotations from Foch, it is always necessary to ask whether the statement was made before, during, or after World War I.

10 Foch, op.cit., p. 322.

11 Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, when asked by the Prime Minister in October 1918 what he thought the terms of the imminent armistice should be, recommended in victory practically the same terms that two years earlier he had rejected as an unacceptable basis for a compromise peace. The difference was that in 1918 Germany had been “vanquished,” a condition that he had several times in his diary specified as being necessary to any peace. See The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, 1914–1919, ed, by Black, Robert, London, 1952, pp. 104Google Scholar, 163f., 252, 294, 333f.

12 Chapters I and II of “The Probable Aspects of the War of the Future,” contained in Douhet, op.cit., pp. 148–77.

13 The best source in English for Douhet's ideas is of course the volume of his writings cited above. But a short substitute is my critical summary, “The Heritage of Douhet,” Air University Quarterly Review, VI, No. a (Summer 1953), pp. 64–69, 121–27.

14 For a brief evaluation of our World War II bombing experience, as reconstructed mainly from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, see my “Strategic Bombing: What It Can Do,” The Reporter (August 15, 1950), pp. 28–31.

15 In his fictional projection of a future war entitled “The War of 19—,” contained in the above-cited volume, pp. 293–394.

16 Douhet, op.cit., p. 55. The italics are Douhet'sl