for the bombing of German cities with an armada of at least 1,000 planes, while H. G. Wells held that 2,000 bombers would be needed to demolish the Essen arms factories and destroy the industrial base of the German war effort.39
It almost goes without saying that the hopes placed on strategic bombing were totally disconnected from military, technological, and industrial reality, first of all on account of the poor precision of the bombers. The reply of the champions of bombing was that it was enough to dispatch a sufficiently sizeable flotilla to a sufficiently large target – in other words, thousands of bombers to a large city – to be certain of causing damage. None of the nations at war, however, had this number of planes at their disposal. Experience at the front, moreover, showed that planes were far from being as invulnerable as was imagined, and that anti-aircraft defence posed a serious threat. No matter, the prophets of aeronautics exclaimed; if planes did not give the expected result then more would have to be built, 10,000 according to H. G. Wells. Such demands became increasingly far-fetched, especially if we bear in mind that in 1915, only Italy, the weakest of the European great powers, possessed a plane designed specially for bombing.40
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