Essay On Air Flight

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On August 17th, 1917, General Jan Christian Smuts, of the Royal Flying Corps, explained the importance of airplanes that they would not just play a role as an auxiliary force within the military, but would create a new form of warfare in the skies: “There is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war use. And the day may not be far off when aerial operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industries and populous centres on a vast scale may become one of the principal operations of war, to which the older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate.” It was upon this recommendation in a report written to the Air Ministry and the Air Staff to combine the two fronts of Britain’s aerial presence, to create a single independent military branch, the Royal Air Force. On April 1st, 1918 the Royal Air Force was officially formed and it would forever change the history of the world to come. The history of aerial flight is often looked at from the perspective of the great moments, from the first flight of the Wright Brothers in 1903, to the Battle of Britain, but many less than stellar moments have perhaps shaped the formation of aviation in ways that may have been overlooked. Heavier-than-air flight, as it were, was in its infancy of development in Britain, due to tightening Government spending and unconvinced investors. For instance, the Wright Brothers were actually invited to come to Britain, but were turned away because the Treasury was unwilling to financially back their aerial experiments. Just the same, the British Balloon Factories were offered meager investments compared to the financial backing that the giant airships, or Zeppelins, were receiving in ... ... middle of paper ... ...ting the target for attacks. These advances quickly led to a significant drop in lost shipping vessels by more than 80 percent, and also allowed for advanced staging of Allied invasion forces that would otherwise be hindered by the German U-boats. On May 8th, 1945 the war against the tyrannical Nazis in Europe was over, but the Allies and the British needed to look towards the Western Front, to defend the United States of America against the Japanese. While the RAF played a major role against the European threats, the presence against the Japanese was not felt nearly as great as it was in the campaign against the Germans. On August 6th, 1945, the first atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima, and a second on August 9th, 1945, on Nagasaki, causing the Japanese to unconditionally surrender to the Allies on August 15th, 1945, officially ending World War II.

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