8 - The Problems of Opening Pandora’s Box: Strategic Bombing and the Civil–Military Divide, 1916–1939

Summary

This chapter is a case study of the dangers of over-estimating the power of technology to rapidly shrink the distinction between civilians and combatants. It examines the evolution of the concept and practice of strategic bombing during the inter-war period by its leading proponent, the Royal Air Force (RAF). The chapter underscores the Britain’s institutional commitment to his new form of warfare and studies how it developed. Yet as a new conflict emerged in the 1930s there was a belated realization that the technological demands required to conduct this type of large scale, long range, campaign were well beyond the current capabilities of the RAF. Even rudimentary skills like navigation were far from what was required for these types of operations. The study emphasis the complexity of bombing, and the often unintended consequences that flowed from this, as well as the importance of fear of what the type of campaign many envisaged could do to Britain’s opponent, and vice versa.