War in the Air, 1914-45

The first practical airplane flew in 1903 and within ten years had been developed into a military weapon. During the First World War it evolved from a reconnaissance platform of dubious reliability to an integral part of the military machine on land or at sea. In addition to their intervention on and above the battlefield, aircraft developed a strategic capability that was predicted to become so powerful that land armies would be obsolete. Such extreme pre-war theories were put to the test in the Second World War and proved wanting. However, in 1945 aircraft did indeed achieve total dominance, with the atomic bomb raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A new era of warfare had begun.