Selected by Frances Pattman, Archivist 

I have chosen two documents from the papers of Brig Gen John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu. The first is an extract from a lecture on Aerial Machines and War given by Douglas-Scott-Montagu to the Aldershot Military Society 1910, in which he talks about how aeroplanes might be used in warfare. The second is an extract from a paper prepared by Montagu for the Imperial Air Service in 1916.

It is interesting to see how in 1910, seven years after the Wright brothers’ first powered flight, Montagu was already thinking that aircraft could be used in war and the different ways they might be employed.  In particular, he thought they would be used in place of cavalry ‘as a screen for cover and to secure information in front of the advancing army’. However, only six years later his approach is a much more offensive one using different types of aircraft with a real emphasis on the use of bombing.

Ref: Douglas-Scott-Montagu 5/15 and 5/114

www.kingscollections.org/catalogues/lhcma/collection/d/do70-001