page_title: History of aerial warfare
section_title: Before World War I
hierarchical_section_title: History of aerial warfare / Before World War I
caption_attribution_description: Italian dirigibles bomb Turkish positions on Libyan Territory. The Italian -Turkish war of 1911-1912 was the first in history in which air attacks (carried out here by dirigible airships) determined the outcome
context_page_description: The history of aerial warfare began in ancient times, with the use of kites in China. In the third century, it progressed to balloon warfare. Airplanes were put to use for war starting in 1911, initially for reconnaissance, and then for aerial combat to shoot down the recon planes. The use of planes for strategic bombing emerged during World War II. Also during World War II, Nazi Germany developed many missile and precision-guided munition systems, including the first cruise missile, the first short-range ballistic missile, the first guided surface-to-air missiles, and the first anti-ship missiles. Ballistic missiles became of key importance during the Cold War, were armed with nuclear warheads, and were stockpiled by the superpowers to deter each other from using them. The first military use of satellites was for reconnaissance in the 1950s, and their use has progressed to worldwide communication and information systems that support globally distributed military users with intelligence from orbit.
context_section_description: The United States Navy had been interested in naval aviation since the turn of the 20th century. In August 1910 Jacob Earl Fickel did the first experimenting with Glenn Curtiss shooting a gun from an airplane. In 1910–1911, the Navy conducted experiments which proved the practicality of carrier-based aviation. On November 14, 1910, near Hampton Roads, Virginia, civilian pilot Eugene Ely took off from a wooden platform installed on the scout cruiser USS Birmingham (CL-2). He landed safely on shore a few minutes later. Ely proved several months later that it was also possible to land on a ship. On January 18, 1911, he landed on a platform attached to the American cruiser USS Pennsylvania (ACR-4) in San Francisco harbor.
  The first use of airplanes in an actual war occurred in the 1911 Italo-Turkish War with Italian Army Air Corps Blériot XI and Nieuport IV monoplanes bombing a Turkish camp at Ain Zara, Libya. In the First Balkan War (1912) the Bulgarian Air Force bombed Turkish positions at Adrianople, while the Greek Aviation performed, over the Dardanelles, the first naval air co-operation mission in history. Airplanes were also used by the United States Army against Pancho Villa. Air reconnaissance was carried out in both wars too.  The air-dropped bomb was extensively used during the First Balkan War (including in the first night bombing on 7 November 1912), and subsequently used by the Imperial German Air Service during World War I.
caption: Italian dirigibles bomb Turkish positions on Libyan territory. The Italo-Turkish War was the first in history to feature aerial bombardment by airplanes and airships.[13]
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2007:02:24 00:16:54", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "122", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF SubSecTime": "167", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "400", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "578", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "188"}