Full article with illustration and links can be found at: http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/centennial-of-aerial-bombing_primordial_air-power/
> 11 November 2011 ~ 11 November 1911, today is the centennial of one hundred > years of aerial bombing, the first example being the bombing of Turkish > troops by Italian airplanes during the Italo-Turkish War in Libya in 1911. > Some grenades hand held, dropped onto troops below. Aerial bombing is in fact > incorrect as the launching of airborne missiles date back much further in > time. Balloons have for instance been used by the Austrians when they > beleaguered Venice in 1849 using unmanned balloons filled with explosives > that could be triggered by electro-contacts using long wires (the idea of > drones which are used in a more advanced way nowadays is born here). So today > it is the centenary of airborne attacks by humans launching explosives from > flying contraptions. The idea of airborne attack goes back into mythical > times, though. […] > We are one century from the moment that a grenade was dropped by hand from an > Italian airplane circling over an oasis in the Libyan desert onto the heads > of a few Ottoman soldiers. The Italian colonization of Libya that followed > the break down of the Ottoman empire – at that time – created the > circumstances that lead one century later to renewed usage of air force. We > may have progressed in technical sense a lot, but politically speaking we > have not yet freed ourselves of crude imposture of imperial power. written on the aerial bombardment centennial day in Phnom Penh Tjebbe van Tijen
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