The establishment of the Independent Force did more than simply formalise the notion of air strike operations. As a direct result of those attacks, within three months the British Government had established what amounted to a strategic bombing unit in France, known as the Independent Force, to conduct reprisal raids against the German homeland within a year the Royal Air Force had been formed as the world’s first separate air force. When those aircraft then started to use their enhanced performance and offensive capabilities to increasing effect against surface targets, another compelling reason to gain control of the air existed.įew events during the First World War caused more panic and alarm than the attacks on London in the middle of the day by German Gotha bombers in mid-1917. Consequently, specialist fighter aircraft quickly proliferated. Once pilots started shooting at each other to try to prevent reconnaissance, control of the air had become a prerequisite for all air activities.
However, in the minds of airmen at least, other roles had assumed priority. Many of those same roles were repeated in support of maritime strategy, in addition to anti-submarine warfare, convoy escort, search and rescue, maritime strike, and minefield survey. For armies, roles such as close air support, airlift, reconnaissance, communications, interdiction, artillery spotting, resupply, and rescue had made the aeroplane an indispensable contributor to continental strategy.
But by the end of the war four years later, almost every role performed by air power during the most successful air campaign in history – the 1991 Gulf War – had emerged, albeit in a sometimes primitive form.
When the First World War started in August 1914, air services belonged to armies and navies to the extent that air doctrine existed it was concerned with reconnaissance and artillery observation in support of surface operations.
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