TR Tuesday, 1 MAY 2007

Mr. Roosevelt gives us his opinion of those who fly and fight...

The ordinary air fighter is an extraordinary man and the extraordinary air fighter stands as one in a million among his fellows.

— Theodore Roosevelt

And then we have these geniuses...

The cavalry, in particular, were not friendly to the aeroplane, which it was believed, would frighten the horses.

— Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh, 1910. (Note: This is not that other Sir Walter Raleigh, who was beheaded nearly three hundred years earlier!)

Another popular fallacy is to suppose that flying machines could be used to drop dynamite on an enemy in time of war.

— William H. Pickering, 'Aeronautics,' 1908.

To affirm that the aeroplane is going to 'revolutionize' navel warfare of the future is to be guilty of the wildest exaggeration.

— 'Scientific American,' 16 July 1910.

Aviation is fine as a sport. But as an instrument of war, it is worthless.

— General Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superiure de Guere, 1911.

It is not possible . . . to concentrate enough military planes with military loads over a modern city to destroy that city.

— US Colonel John W. Thomason Jr., November 1937