Early Bombers

The U. S. Army obtained its first airplane, a Wright Flyer, in 1909. For almost two years, this was the only plane in what the Washington Star newspaper called the nation’s “aerial fleet.” In 1911 Lieutenant Riley Scott invented a bomb-

sight (a device for aiming bombs) made of nails and wire. He tested it using bombs held in a canvas sling beneath the airplane, and he managed to drop them within 10 feet (3 meters) of a 5-square-foot (0.5-square-meter) target from a height of 400 feet (122 meters). The army was not impressed.

Other people saw a future for bombers, however. In 1911 an Italian army officer named Giulio Douhet described how airplanes could attack an enemy’s communications and supply routes. The Italians were the first to use planes for bombing, in 1911, when one of their airplanes dropped four bombs on a Turkish camp in North Africa dur­ing a war between Italy and Turkey.