ON NOVEMBER 1, 1911, ITALIAN SUB-LIEUTENANT GIULIO GAVOTTI LEANED OVER THE EDGE OF THE COCKPIT OF HIS ETRICH TAUBE MONOPLANE.
Below him he could see a camp in the Libyan desert that was occupied by Turkishsupported Bedouin troops who were battling the Italians in the Italo-Turkish War. Gavotti identified his target and then, one by one, dropped four grapefruit-sized grenades, each weighing four pounds, over the side of his airplane into the enemy camp. The grenades inflicted no casualties, but they did enter the history books. They were the first bombs dropped from an airplane in war.
They were not, however, the first bombs dropped from an airplane.
It did not take long after the Wright brothers made their historic airplane flights in December 1903 before people began considering how to turn the flying machine into a war weapon. As early as 1906 the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Chief, Brig. Gen. William Crozier, was thinking about the concept, although he thought it would be easier to drop bombs from a balloon than a rapidly moving airplane, and he stressed the importance of avoiding “the destruction of Red Cross hospitals, churches, seminaries, and all the establishments usually immune in time of bombardment.”
In fact, people had already dropped bombs from balloons. The first tactical military use of airborne bombs took place in July 1849 during an Austrian siege of Venice. The Austrians launched unmanned paper balloons—exactly how, the world’s first aircraft carrier. Each carried a bomb with up to 30 pounds of explosives. The details of the attack remain obscure, but the idea apparently came from Lieutenant Franz von Uchatius of the Austrian artillery. The results were not what the Austrians had hoped. Said one account, “[T]he balloons appeared to rise about 4,500 feet. Then they exploded in midair or fell into the water, or, blown by a sudden southeast wind, sped over the city and dropped on the besiegers.” Venetians who had gathered outside to watch the spectacle cheered and clapped when the bombs exploded over the Austrian lines.
