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A HISTORY OF BOMBING
EDWARD HAGEDORN (1902-1982), FROM ‘IMAGES OF WAR'
BY SVEN LINDQVIST
- We shan't have to leave our fortress, now, when
we want to blow up civilization. ’
-MARK TWAIN
(‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court )
In the beginning was the bomb. It consisted of a pipe,
like a bamboo pipe of the type abundant in China, filled with an
explosive, like gunpowder, which the Chinese had discovered
as early as the 9th century. If one closed this pipe at both ends,
it became a bomb. When the pipe was opened at one end, it
was blown forward by the explosion. The bomb then became
a rocket. It soon developed into a two-stage rocket — a large
rocket that rose into the air and released a shower of small
rockets over the enemy. The Chinese used rockets of this type
in their defense of Kaifeng in 1232. The rocket weapon spread
via the Arabs and Indians to Europe around 1250 — but it was
forgotten until the English rediscovered it at the beginning of the
19th century
If the rocket was opened at the other end, the bomb
became a gun or a cannon The explosion blew out whatever
had been tamped into the pipe, like a bullet or another, smaller
bomb, called a shell Both the gun and the cannon had been
fully developed in China by 1280, and they reached Europe
thirty years later.
Bombs began to be used in warfare around the same
time that the chemical equation for gunpowder was first
published, in 1044 They were dropped from the tops of city
walls or slung from catapults at the enemy
The first technical description of a bomb, made in China
during the 12th century, shows the bomb filled with thirty-odd
thin slivers of porcelain, which were flung out in the explosion
Starting in 1412 there are descriptions of “fragmentation bombs”
filled with iron shot or shards of porcelain inside a thin cast-iron
shell, which blew to bits with the explosion. The jagged shards
of metal were intended to “wound the skin and break the bones."
Thus the first bombs were what today we call anti-personnel
bombs, intended for battling so-called soft targets.
The first depiction of war to describe the use of bombs
dates from 1207. It emphasizes what would later be called the
“morale effect” or the “terror effect.” When the bombs exploded,
“the (enemy) wretches were terrified and quite lost their senses,
men and horses running away as fast as they could "
For a long time the bomb was considered a primitive
forerunner to the rocket or cannon But the early theoreticians
of flight realized that the bomb could be a terrible weapon if it
could be thrown from the air.
In his Prodrome overo Saggio (“The Aerial Ship") of
1670, Francesco de Lana Terzi already warned of airships that
from an appropriate height could drop “artificial fire, bullets,
and bombs” at “houses, castles, or cities," without placing them
selves in the least danger. Defying his own warning, he himself
tried to construct such an airship, built on the vacuum principle.
In 1710, Gottfried Zeidler published Der fleigende
Wandersmann (“The Flying Wanderer”). He dreamed of flight
as a way to make travel easier and cheaper. Like storks and,
swallows, everyone would be able to take off for warmer lands. iw
when winter came But he also realized the lack of security
flight would create. “No country, no city would ever be safe from
attacks from above."
A French printer, Restif de la Bretonne, traveled far
into the future in La découverte australe par un homme-volant
(“The Astral Discovery of a Flying Man”), 1781 There he foresaw
interplanetary rocket trips and fleets of bombers leaving “in the
immense space of future time a trail of infamy, fear and horror.”
The year after that, the Montgolfier brothers in Avignon began
to experiment with hot-air balloons. Ascents were first attempted
with unmanned balloons, since no one knew what would happen
to a human being who left the earth and rose into the unknown
The balloon also was tested with a duck and a sheep as passen
gers before the Montgolfier brothers took off in an unanchored
balloon on November 21, 1783, and flew for twenty-five miles.
Among the audience was a Prussian lieutenant engineer
by the name of J.C.G. Heyne. He was impressed by the military
possibilities of the balloon and a few months later had already
published the first book about flight as a weapon. The balloon
could, he wrote, “rain down fire and destruction on whole towns
with catastrophic results for the inhabitants.” But since this threat
would hover all the countries at war they would, Heyne believed,
soon agree on rules to prevent flying machines from being used
for purposes of terror or mass destruction.
Balloons proved to be so vulnerable and difficult to steer
that they lacked significant military value. A hundred years later,
in 1899, at The Hague, the great powers could therefore agree
to follow Heyne’s recommendation and forbid bombardment
from balloons.
On December 17, 1903, at 10:35 a m., the first motor-
driven airplane lifted off and flew. For only 12 seconds and for
only forty yards — but an ancient dream was fulfilled in that
moment. Finally humans could fly! That humans could now
bomb as well was forgotten in the excitement. All of the dangers
associated with the conquest of the sky were blown away like
mist in the tailwind of the first airplane.
Dumbstruck crowds in New York and Paris saw an
airplane for the first time in 1908 Every eye was fixed on the
rubber wheels as if enchanted — would they really leave the
ground? Yes, the miracle came to pass! “Never have I seen
such a look of wonder in the faces of a multitude," wrote a
Chicago newspaper reporter. “Everyone seemed to feel that
it was a new day in their lives."
Flight seemed to be a step into a new element, a new
world People spoke of the “aerial age” and felt that we had now
left behind our earlier, earthbound existence and were launched
into a new way of life. Flying would be as normal as riding a
bicycle, as natural as walking
All good things would come with flight: democracy,
equality, freedom The air was freedom’s realm, where travel
went on unimpeded by rails, roadblocks, or stationmasters.
Female fliers saw a great future in the air, where old gender
differences would no long apply. When cars were replaced by
planes, black chauffeurs would train to be pilots and soon be the
leaders of the air, according to another hopeful train of thought.
Flight would lift humankind from the filth of the earth
and create a new life-form, according to Alfred W Lawson, an
early adherent of the gospel of flight. He believed in a new kind
of human being, the “alti-man,” who would be born in the air and
live his whole life up there. In this future, the “ground-men” who
continue to walk on the bottom of the air-sea would be regarded
in much the same way we regard oysters and crabs. Lawson’s
alti-man would conquer all the limitations of the earth and
become an angel or a god.
Other new means of transport met impassioned
resistance from people who feared their social consequence.
Not so the airplane No one maintained that flight disfigured the
landscape, as the railroad did, or that it destroyed the morals of
the youth, as did the bicycle and the automobile.
New weapons — machine guns, tanks, poisonous gas
— were sincerely detested by the general public. But not the
airplanes. The British sometimes feared that their hereditary foe,
France, would invade England with troops sent in from the air.
But their delight in airplanes conquered their fear. Even when
airplanes were used to kill people on the ground, air war was
generally considered “purer" and “nobler" than other forms of
warfare. Pilots were seen as the duelists of the air, modern
knights engaging in a heavenly tournament.
Airplanes were said to preserve the peace, mainly by
democratizing the dangers of war. Up to this time, those who
commanded others to do battle with one another could feel quite
comfortable about their own safety. But in the age of flight they
too would be exposed and therefore would be less inclined to
begin a war. People also believed that flight would do away with
the very cause of national conflicts by bringing people closer to
one another Those who had been divisive and hostile on the
ground would live peacefully together in the boundless heavens
during the age of flight.
The first bomb dropped from an airplane exploded in an
oasis outside Tripoli on November 1, 1911. Since the beginning
of the 16th century, North Africa enjoyed a relatively independ
> ent positron in the Turkish empire. During the 19th century, the
Turks lost possession after possession to the European powers,
and by 1911, only a little strip of coastline remained to them,
between British Egypt and French Tunisia Now the Italians
wanted to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of a united Italy by
conquering that last little piece of Turkish North Africa — the city
of Tripoli, with its 30,000 inhabitants and a wide stretch of desert
populated by about 600,000 Arab nomads.
The Tripoli war was a godsend for the Italian pilots. Just
three years after the first exhibit of flight in Paris they would now
have a chance to battle-test the new weapon. One of them
mounted a camera in his airplane and took the first air photo
graphy Another made the first night raid, and a third dropped
the first firebomb. A fourth was the first to be shot down.
A theory of precision bombing — with the pilot as police
man, the bomb as his baton — was developed by R. P. Hearne
in Airships in Peace & War (1910) Punitive expeditions are
costly and time-consuming. It can take months for them to reach
their goal But punishment from the air can be carried out imme
diately and at a much lower cost. “In savage lands the moral
effect of such an instrument of war is impossible to conceive,”
writes Hearne. “The appearance of the airship would strike terror
into the tribes " And in addition, one could avoid “the awful waste
of life occasioned to white troops by expeditionary work.” The air
force could simply patrol the land as the navy patrolled the sea.
When necessary, bombers could mete out a “sharp, severe, and
terrible punishment," which would nevertheless be more humane
than a traditional punitive expedition. For the bombs would
affect only the lawbreakers and would leave the innocent
unharmed.
This was, of course, pure fantasy. Hearne’s idea
demanded a precision that did not exist When the French sent
ù
WHAT THE GENERAL SAID
COLUMBIA RIVER
MARITIME MUSEUM
1792 MARINE DR.. ASTORIA. ORE.
(503) 325-2323
Chess pieces are carved out of bone:
i will have them advance until the world is
mirrored in the brass buttons of my uniform
i will have bridgeheads hammered
until the hungry mouths of graves go silent
i will stroke the breasts of my women
like marble monuments to the fallen
i will lower the temperature of my body
to store my heart inside like steak tarture and
later give it to my grandchildren to play with
when they tussle around me, my heart,
which will be young, untouched and raw
-JAN WAGNER
Intyovted/Beor on Tap
#1 cm 2 ncL Street
Aitoricu* 325-0033