Interwar bombing theory and the desire to avoid another trench war

The participants discuss reading Trenchard, Mitchell, and an Italian theorist on strategic bombing. They describe proposals for attacks on populations, including chemical warfare, as extraordinarily destructive. One explanation offered is that experience of the First World War made some theorists willing to accept extreme measures to prevent another similar conflict. That explanation preserves the severity of what they proposed rather than excusing it. The discussion also emphasizes how assumptions that bombers would get through shaped those imagined outcomes.