Air Power Quotes - Page 3

• Air power is new to all our countries. It brings advantages to some and weakens others; it calls for readjustment everywhere.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Country, Air, Advantage

  "Aviation, Geography, and Race". Reader's Digest, pp. 64-67, November 1939.

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• Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side which first employs air power as it should be employed. Germany, entangled in the meshes of vast land campaigns, cannot now disengage her air power for a strategically proper application. She missed victory through air power by a hair's breadth in 1940. . . . We ourselves are now at the crossroads.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  Hair, Land, Victory

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• The weapon where the man is sitting in is always superior against the other.

  Erich Hartmann

  Men, Sitting, Weapons

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• Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

  Winston Churchill

  Memorial Day, Military, War

  Speech in House of Commons, 20 Aug. 1940

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• Such an experiment without actual conditions of war to support it is a foolish waste of time. . . . I once saw a man kill a lion with a 30-30 caliber rifle under certain conditions, but that doesn't mean that a 30-30 rifle is a lion gun.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  War, Mean, Men

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• No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering. You may call me Meyer.

  Hermann Goring

  Names, Enemy, Bombers

  Addressing the Luftwaffe in September 1939. "August 1939: The Last Days of Peace" by Nicholas Fleming, p. 171, 1979.

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• Never abandon the possibility of attack. Attack even from a position of inferiority, to disrupt the enemy's plans. This often results in improving one's own position.

  Adolf Galland

  Enemy, Inferiority, Aviation

  "The First and the Last". Book by Adolf Galland, 1954.

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• There is something more important than any ultimate weapon. That is the ultimate position-the position of total control over Earth that lies somewhere out in space. That is . . . the distant future, though not so distant as we may have thought. Whoever gains that ultimate position gains control, total control, over the Earth, for the purposes of tyranny or for the service of freedom

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Lying, Space, Important

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• ISIS is a formidable foe, but the counter forces to it have only just begun and if these forces, the Iraqi army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, American air power, the Syrian Free Army, work in a coordinated fashion, it will start losing ground. Also, please keep in mind that ISIS does not actually hold as much ground as the many maps flashed on television keep showing. Large parts of those territories that ISIS supposedly controls are vacant desert.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Fashion, Army, Air

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• A modern state is such a complex and interdependent fabric that it offers a target highly sensitive to a sudden and overwhelming blow from the air.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Blow, Air, Target

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• In the early stages of the fight Mr. Winston Churchill spoke with affectionate raillery of me and my "Chicks." He could have said nothing to make me more proud; every Chick was needed before the end.

  Hugh Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding

  Fighting, Proud, Aviation

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• The conviction of the justification of using even the most brutal weapons is always dependent on the presence of a fanatical belief in the necessity of the victory of a revolutionary new order on this globe.

  Adolf Hitler

  Order, Victory, Weapons

  Adolf Hitler (1941). “Mein Kampf: complete and unabridged, fully annotated”

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• Air warfare is a shot through the brain, not a hacking to pieces of the enemy's body.

  J. F. C. Fuller

  Air, Brain, Enemy

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• The first and absolute requirement of strategic air power in this war was control of the air in order to carry out sustained operations without prohibitive losses.

  Carl Andrew Spaatz

  Military, War, Loss

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• To me our bombing policy appears to be suicidal. Not because it does not do vast damage to our enemy, it does; but because, simultaneously, it does vast damage to our peace aim, unless that aim is mutual economic and social annihilation.

  J. F. C. Fuller

  Suicide, Suicidal, Enemy

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• Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power.

  George W. Bush

  Air, Sea, Space

  "Planet Pentagon: How the Pentagon Came to Own the Earth, Seas, and Skies" by Nick Turse, www.guernicamag.com. July 11, 2007.

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• To use a fighter as a fighter-bomber when the strength of the fighter arm is inadequate to achieve air superiority is putting the cart before the horse.

  Adolf Galland

  Horse, Air, Bombers

  Adolf Galland (1954). “The first and the last: the rise and fall of the German fighter forces, 1938-1945”

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• If we should have to fight, we should be prepared to do so from the neck up instead of from the neck down.

  Jimmy Doolittle

  Fighting, Should Have, Necks

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• "He who wants to protect everything, protects nothing," is one of the fundamental rules of defense.

  Adolf Galland

  Defense, Fundamentals, Want

  Adolf Galland (1954). “The First and the Last: The Rise and Fall of the German Fighter Forces, 1938-1954”

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• The best way to defend the bombers is to catch the enemy before it his in position to attack. Catch them when they are taking off, or when they are climbing, or when they are forming up. Don't think you can defend the bomber by circling around him. It's good for the bombers morale, and bad for tactics.

  Robin Olds

  Thinking, Climbing, Enemy

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• Lying offshore, ready to act, the presence of ships and Marines sometimes means much more than just having air power or ship's fire, when it comes to deterring a crisis. And the ships and Marines may not have to do anything but lie offshore. It is hard to lie offshore with a C-141 or C-130 full of airborne troops.

  Colin Powell

  Lying, Military, Mean

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• I will not wage war against women and children! I have instructed my air force to limit their attacks to military objectives. However, if the enemy should conclude from this that he might get away with waging war in a different manner he will receive an answer that he'll be knocked out of his wits!

  Adolf Hitler

  Children, Military, War

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• A thing of orchestrated hell-a terrible symphony of light and flame.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Light, Flames, Symphony

  Edward R. Murrow (1967). “In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961”

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• We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. We are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly in order to make it impossible for her to go in with the war. That is our object, and we shall pursue it relentlessly.

  Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

  War, Cities, Order

  Radio address on July 28, 1942. "Bishop George Bell: House of Lords Speeches and Correspondence with Rudolf Hess". Book edited by Peter K. Raina, api.parliament.uk. 2009.

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• As a peace machine, it's value to the world will be beyond computation. Would a declaration of war between Russia and Japan be made, if within an hour there after a swifty gliding aeroplane might take its flight from St Petersburg and drop half a ton of dynamite above the enemy's war offices? Could any nation afford to war upon any other with such hazards in view?

  John Brisben Walker

  War, Russia, Japan

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