c. 1911-1939 CE
Ada: After Gavotti, it all accelerated fast. By February nineteen twelve, mechanics bolted a vertical launch tube to a Blériot. An aviator rigged a graduated scale as a crude bombsight.1
Theo: So the handmade cotton-wool box becomes actual equipment within months.
Ada: And Gavotti kept setting firsts. On the fourth of March, nineteen twelve, he flew the first night combat flight in a heavier-than-air aircraft, back over Ain Zara.410
Theo: Who was watching all this and taking notes?
Ada: A staff major in Turin named Giulio Douhet. He read the Tripoli reports and concluded the aeroplane was an offensive weapon, not a spyglass. In nineteen twenty-one he published The Command of the Air.
Theo: The book that argued you win wars by bombing cities and the people in them.
Ada: That doctrine. And the saddest coda: Gavotti died in Rome in October nineteen thirty-nine, at fifty-six, exactly one month after the Second World War began pouring bombs over Europe.10
Theo: From one man cradling a grenade in his lap to whole cities under fire, in a single lifetime.
Ada: He wrote that he'd be pleased to be the first. He had no idea what the first would lead to. By the way, you can stop any episode and ask us anything, we love the questions.
Theo: This was Historai, where history answers back.