ABSTRACT
The early twentieth century was a period of speculation and visionary thinking about warfare. In 1906, N. Stern’s Die Eroberung der Luft had envisaged aircraft technology as a force for good, binding nations together in peace, while others such as Paul Scheerbart, with his Die Entwicklung der Luftmilitarismus und die Auflösung der Europaeischen Landheere, Festungen and Seeflotten of 1909, had seen aerial militarism as so terrifying that it would lead to the dissolution of armies and navies. The Frenchman, Ferdinand Ferber, believed that aircraft would prove very effective in war, while the German, Wilhelm Kress believed that their frightfulness would help to deter conflict.1 In 1908, H.G. Wells published The War in the Air which envisaged an airborne armada of German Drachenflieger attacking the USA. This force determined the outcome of a great naval battle by destroying the American Dreadnoughts with bombs, and went on to leave New York a ‘furnace of crimson flames, from which there was no escape’.2
