Air force

An air force in the broadest sense is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare.

Air forces typically consist of a combination of fighters, bombers, helicopters, transport planes and other aircraft.

Logistics, security, intelligence, special operations, cyber space support, maintenance, weapons loaders, and many other specialties are required by all air forces.

[citation needed] In 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War, Italy employed aircraft for the first time ever in the world for reconnaissance and bombing missions against Turkish positions on Libyan Territory.

The Afghan Air Force was established on 22 August 1924, with support from the Soviet Union and Great Britain, but a civil war destroyed most of the planes and it was not reestablished until 1937, when King Mohammed Nadir Shah took power.

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force was not established until 1954;[14] in World War II Japanese military aviation had been carried out by the Army and Navy.

At that time, Britain did have aircraft, though her airships were less advanced than the zeppelins and were very rarely used for attacking; instead, they were usually used to spy on German U-boats (submarines).

Fixed-wing aircraft at the time were quite primitive, being able to achieve velocities comparable to that of modern automobiles and mounting minimal weaponry and equipment.

Aerial services were still largely a new venture, and relatively unreliable machines and limited training resulted in stupendously low life expectancies for early military aviators.

[citation needed] By the time World War II began, planes had become much safer, faster, and more reliable.

The aerial warfare in Pacific Ocean theatre was of a comparable strategic significance to the Battle of Britain but was largely conducted by the US and Japanese naval aviation services and not by air forces.

The air force's role of strategic bombing against enemy infrastructure was developed during the 1930s by the Japanese in China and by the Germans during the Spanish Civil War.

The war ended when United States Army Air Forces Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.