JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 915
We’re a few days past the 95th anniversary of the
first aerial bombing of a city, the first in the long and unhappy calculus of
eliminating things and people in civilized settings by dropping high explosives (and etc.) on them
from the air. 19 January 1915 saw the first bombs dropped from an airship
during WWI, two German Zeppelins lighting up Great Yarmouth, Sheringham and
King’s Lynn in the
The effectiveness and temerity of bombing escalated
exponentially--virally by the end of WWII. Aerial bombing’s future
effectiveness and devastating potential was recognized by the early 1920’s, particularly
in the form of the Hague Conference
(1924), where the bombing of cities and civilians was theoretically controlled,
if not outlawed.
And that was about the size of the story for the Syrians, because as it turns out, the French were just maintaining an order that for them was a simple police action; civilians populations could not be bombed in the eyes of international law, if the bombing was being done to a foreign people; since the French were there and occupying the country, they were conducting a police action, and in a sense were merely bombing themselves, loosening them from the barriers of whatever international law could be applied to their actions by the League of Nations.
These are just a few examples from the French; there are
plenty more for other countries for every decade, every year. (The Brits in Teheran in 1924, the Italians
at Harar in 1935, Franco/Luftwaffe in
The Big Fear of bombing from the air and the need to protect the populations of cities led to all sorts of anti-bomb/bomb-proof architectural plans, most not very good and not very practical. Such is the price of trying to make your people happy. I happen to have
a few in my files, which are seen above and below. (The top images were printed in the Illustrated London News in 134; the bottom in 1927.) The results of the plans were no doubt intended to pursue a common belief that cities could be constructed to be bomb-proof, that the future that national leaders were dragging their subjects into wasn't necessarily as dire as the possibilities of aerial bombings hinted things might be. Of course the resulting buildings would be massive and impossibly expensive; the prospect for underground cities (and roads!) was just a non-starter. And these future-views would all be obsolete in less than 15 years what with the development of enormous firepower. And I'm not talking atomic.
Good post -- thanks for this! I came across the plan in your 4th and 5th pictures early in my research, but didn't make a note of it and could never remember who was responsible. I knew he was French but I was thinking Le Corbusier (who also dabbled), but now I see it was Paul Vauthier. It's interesting that all these examples seem to be sourced from overseas (France, Germany, USSR). I found very few examples of such radical redesigns of the city by British urban planners and architects. In fact the ones I did find weren't very radical at all, eg http://airminded.org/2008/07/29/architects-of-preservation/
BTW, I apologise for being pedantic but the Zeppelin raids on Britain (which I forgot to post about, doh!) weren't the first bombing of cities: that was Venice in 1849. They weren't the first Zeppelin raids on cities either -- Antwerp was bombed in the first months of the war, and Paris later in 1914. Also, a German aeroplane dropped a bomb on Dover on Christmas Eve 1914 (it supposedly hit a cabbage patch).
Posted by: Airminded | 23 January 2010 at 01:39 AM
Yes, very good. The prevalent belief that wars would be played out through a twin emphasis on aerial bombing and gas warfare - I guess extrapolated from World War I - is well-exemplified in HG Wells' "Things to Come".
Posted by: Ray Girvan | 23 January 2010 at 07:30 AM
True, though Wells saw through to a post-apocalyptic future (governed by Technocracy types) that would've eliminated wars. I wrote about this a little two weeks ago (with a film clip!), though I was much more interested in the Moon Canon than anything else. http://tinyurl.com/yk9tsnj
Posted by: John F. Ptak | 25 January 2010 at 01:23 AM
Airminded: mea culpa! I knew as soon as I wrote "first" that I should've changed it immediately to "extremely early" but then forgot. Thanks so much for pointing all of this out!
Posted by: John F. Ptak | 25 January 2010 at 01:25 AM