Strategic bombing during World War I
The introduction of air raid warnings and shelters can be dated to World War I, as can the design of anti-aircraft artillery and the development of methods for coordinated aerial defence.
Many of the advocates of strategic bombing during the interwar period, such as Italy's Giulio Douhet, America's Billy Mitchell, and Britain's Hugh Trenchard, had commanded aircraft during World War I.
Within the first month of the war, Germany had formed the "Ostend Carrier Pigeon Detachment", actually an airplane unit to be used for the bombing of English port cities.
[1] During the First Battle of the Marne, a German pilot flying aerial reconnaissance missions over Paris in a Taube regularly dropped bombs on the city.
Before the stabilisation of the Western Front, the German aircraft dropped fifty bombs on Paris, slightly damaging Notre Dame Cathedral.
[3] The first extended campaigns of strategic bombing were carried out against England by the German Empire's fleet of airships, which were then the only aircraft capable of such sustained activities so far from their bases.
[2] This campaign was approved on 7 January 1915 by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who forbade attacks on London, fearing that his relatives in the British royal family might be injured.
The Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine), whose airships were primarily used for reconnaissance over the North Sea, continued to bomb the United Kingdom until 1918.
[4] Germany employed 125 airships during the war, losing more than half and sustaining a 40% attrition rate of their crews, the highest of any German service branch.
On 6 June 1918 the British formed the Independent Force under Major General Hugh Trenchard to engage in long-range bombing directed at industrial targets deep in German territory.
[2] On 1 November 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War, the Kingdom of Italy had carried out the first aerial military mission in history, when Giulio Gavotti dropped bombs by hand on Turkish positions in the Libyan desert.
[3] Later in the war, photographic reconnaissance and offensive actions were conducted by Ansaldo SVA aircraft, which launched a four-aircraft strike from Ponte San Pietro against Innsbruck on 28 February 1918, strafing and bombing railroad marshalling yards.
[6] The Russian Empire possessed the only long-range heavy bomber to be operational in the first year of the war, the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets (IM).
[2][3] By March 1918, when Russia left the war, around seventy Ilya Muromets had been constructed, and they had flown over 350 bombing or reconnaissance missions along the entire Eastern Front.
Nonetheless, Austro-Hungarian pilots based at Pula flew forty-two bombing missions over Venice after the Italian Front had advanced to within a few miles of the city.
[2] The Chiesa degli Scalzi, near the Ferrovia train station, was damaged, including two ceiling frescoes by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.
But when danger is signalled the elec[tric] light is cut off, sirens blow, cannon firebombs explode and the whole city shakes on its piles.
