The Command of the Air

North Stratford, NH: Ayer Company, 1984. Reprint Edition. Hardcover. Good. [4], viii, 394, [2] pages. Tables. Format is approximately 6 inches by 9 inches. Cover has slight wear and soiling. Fep corner clipped. This is one of the National and International Viewpoints series. Giulio Douhet (30 May 1869 - 15 February 1930) was an Italian general and air power theorist. He was a key proponent of strategic bombing. He was a contemporary of Billy Mitchell and Hugh Trenchard. Douhet argued that air power was revolutionary because it operated in the third dimension. Aircraft could fly over surface forces, relegating them to secondary importance. Command of the air meant victory. Douhet believed in the morale effects of bombing. Air power could break a people's will by destroying a country's "vital centers". Targeting was central to this strategy and he believed that commanders would prove themselves by their choice of targets. Douhet identified the five basic target types as: industry, transport infrastructure, communications, government and "the will of the people". This book, first published in 1921, has been called the most important book on air power ever written. This is the oft quoted, seldom seen classic work of Giulio Douhet, long out of print in English. "In the pantheon of air power theorists, Giulio Douhet holds center stage." - Richard P. Hallion, The Air Force Historian. "Douhet reigns as one of the twentieth century's foremost strategic air power theorists. Along with William "Billy" Mitchell, Douhet understood that the technological advances in weaponry made during World War I were not fully utilized by Allied commanders. Douhet thus spent the decade after the war constructing a theory that would facilitate the strategic use of what he conceived to be the biggest technological breakthrough of all, the airplane. [...] Over time, [his] theories became institutionalized to the point that they were rarely questioned. Their influence was subsequently evident in strategic Air Force operations." - Air University Review, 1986.