Airwar by Phillip S. Meilinger

Author:Phillip S. Meilinger [Meilinger, Phillip S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Aviation
ISBN: 9780714682662
Google: 4K5LpFG6dxYC
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2003-01-15T01:14:53+00:00

Notes

This chapter originally appeared under the same title in War in History, July 1999.

1. For a good overview of these operations, see David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919–1939 (New York: St Martin’s, 1990).

2. Fred L. Israel (ed.), Major Peace Treaties of Modern History, 1648–1967, 4 vols (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), II, 1277.

3. It should be noted that the 1921 meeting was called by President Warren Harding, the 1927 conference by President Calvin Coolidge, and the 1930 naval conference by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald; none was sponsored by the League.

4. The German anger with which she viewed her unequal treatment, and the pressure of public opinion for not being able to rectify this insult, is well summarized in a note to the British Foreign Secretary from the German Foreign Secretary dated 27 July 1931. E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler (eds), Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939. Second Series, Vol. Ill, 1931–32 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1948), 483–6.

5. Air Commodore L. E. O. Charlton, War From the Air: Past, Present, Future (London: Thomas Nelson, 1935), 172–3.

6. Samuel Hoare, ‘A Note on the Knock-Out Blow’, C.P. 44 (32), 25 January 1932, AIR 8/142, Public Records Office (PRO), Kew, Britain. (Hereafter, all documents preceded by AIR or CAB are from the PRO.)

7. A. C. Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany, 1914–1918 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1937), 672. It should also be noted that the blockade was not lifted until after Germany signed the Versailles Treaty in June 1919, seven months after the Armistice. One RAF study noted that the blockade ‘in sober truth, killed more men, women and children of the civilian population than are likely to be killed by bombs in any future war’. ‘Restriction of Air Warfare’, [1934], AIR 8/203. This was an accurate prediction. According to the authoritative US Strategic Bombing Survey commissioned by President Roosevelt, 305,000 German civilians died from air attack in World War II – less than half the number who starved to death as a result of the naval blockade of 1914–19. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Overall Report (European War), 30 September 1945, 1.

8. John Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire: Myths and Anti-Myths of War, 1861–1945 (London: Book Club Associates, 1980), 132.

9. ACM Sir John Salmond, ‘The Basis for the Limitation of Air Armaments – Metropolitan and Overseas Quota’, D.C. (P) 36 and 37, 8 June 1931, AIR 8/128. Most of the same arguments are repeated in an interesting memo by Arthur Portal to the CAS, 23 January 1933, AIR 8/136. Portal would later be the CAS during most of World War II and would thus have had to live with any limitations agreed at Geneva.

10. Ibid.

11. Memo by CAS to the Cabinet, D.P.C. (31) 11 and 12, 17 July 1931, AIR 8/126.

12. Memo by Secretary of State for Air, ‘Convention to Improve the Means of War’, 2 January 1932, AIR 8/124.

13. French concerns were fueled by the fact that Japan flagrantly

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