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Bomb dropping had been a constant topic among aviation pioneers and military leaders since early 1910. Even the respected Scientific American magazine ran cover stories about it. They all imagined cities reduced to rubble, fortifications destroyed, entire battle fleets sunken; all by the perceived power of this new dimension of warfare. They failed to notice, that while early test results were promising, they were conducted on a controlled environment. Their attack altitude was no more than three hundred feet. No gun was fire at them and their targets were stationary. Add this to the fact that by the start of 1909, no armed force in the world possessed a single operational airplane.
The situation improved in 1910, when around fifty aircrafts were operational in the entire world. But by mid 1911, the situation was different. The aircraft was used in combat for the first time. The occasion was a little known colonial dispute that erupted in a larger conflict pitting the Italians against the Ottoman Empire for the control of Libya. The Italians, aware of the fact that they would be fighting in territory the Turks considered home area and in needed of an edge, decided to deploy their infant air component. Their air assets consisted of nine of the early Taube sample airplanes and two observation balloons. The Taube was the brainchild of a brilliant Austrian engineer named Igo Etrich. The Taube, meaning "dove" in German, was an all wooden, canvas cover aircraft. It had a fuselage length of 33’-5” and a height of 10’-5”. Its wingspan covered 45.8sq ft. Its air-form frame allowed the aircraft to become nearly invisible to the people on the ground when it flew at altitudes above 1,200’. The plane was powered by a primitive piston engine that gave it a top speed of just under 60mph. Controlling the Taube was a relative easy task by those day’s standards. Control in flight was achieved by wrapping or twisting the wings and tail, very similar to what the Wright Brothers did with their Flyer airplane. The first Taube prototype flew in early July 1910, and by late that year, the German company Rumpler bought the license to manufacture the aircraft. The aircraft went on to serve in the Great War. One sample even flew over the French capital in late September 1914 dropping propaganda leaflets.
On the Eastern Front, the Taube played an important role in the Battle of Tannenberg, providing German commanders with accurate information regarding the Russian army movements and troop dispositions. Badly outclassed when the War began, by early 1915, the plane was delegated to training duties. But in November, 1911; the Taube was destined to make history. On the early hours of November 1st, 1911, a lone Toube aircraft took-off from a desert strip in route to the main Turkish line. At the controls was Italian Army Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti. Passing at around three to four hundred feet, Gavotti made a freighting impression on the Turks just below. After two passes, the Italian pilot commenced what we now call a bomb run. Once in position, Gavotti proceeded to drop four 4.5lb Cipelli grenades. He literally pulled their pins with his teeth before lobbing them out of the plane's rudimentary cockpit.
“Aviator Lt. Gavotti Throws Bomb on Enemy Camp. Terrorized Turks Scatter upon Unexpected Celestial Assault” was the headline on all the wire services. A tremendous exaggeration to put it mildly. But an exaggeration that would in the future hold true. The astonished Turks response to the world’s first aerial raid was evenly exaggerated. They claimed that the Italian’s bombs had hit a civilian hospital outside the contested area and that the damage had causes “great lost of life”. A fact that was vigorously denied by the Italian government. A post-conflict inquiry found that an artillery shell was the culprit for the hospital’s damages and that no civilian or military personnel was injured on the attack. In the aftermath of the raid, with both sides claiming major damages resulting from the use of this new kind of “indiscriminate” attack, outside observers were brought in by the governments of Great Britain, France, Germany, Imperial Russia, and even the United States. After carefully analyzing the data collected, many of them subscribed to the idea that the raid was less positive than early reported. Many of the Italian grenades failed to detonate at all, the ones that did, exploded harmlessly over the vast desert sand. But the most significant find was that of the attitude of the Turks to the raid. Contrary to common belief, the Turks had not been scared by the small Italian raid. On the other hand, when the first Italian Taube appeared on the sky, Turkish ground forces tried to zero on them with their machine guns. A tactic they had perfected while targeting the slow moving Italian balloons that flew once in awhile over the battlefield.
Again, the reality was different that perception, and once again, perception gather the biggest press. Time and time again, newspapers across Europe would report the exploits of this obscure Italian army officer and proclaimed the death of the navy and army, while ascending the aircraft to almost mythical levels.
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