[bristol scout]

And indeed anyone wanting a 'flavour' of how deadly ground strafing was need only read 'Winged Victory'. " Unfortunately they (camels) were good machines for ground strafing..............it was, indeed the great casualty maker........you could do very little to avoid machine gun fire from the ground (which)...no one could get used to...."

I must draw your attention to 'futile offensives'----If the Germans had been in occupation of half of England, and quite content to stay there---would it have been futile to attempt, time and time again, no matter what the cost, to drive them out? Futile is a word not always best used when Democracy itself is fighting for it's very existence. And talk of how 'futile' had been that war, led inexorably to 'appeasement and dis-arming ---which, equally inexorably led to the next war---was that war futile? And yet such great bloodbaths as happened on the western front, and indeed on all fronts--- also happened in the later war---the names were mostly Russian names, and not French or Belgian ones! The grinding down, attritional battles still took place---how could they not---it was the era of mass armies par excellence.

The invention of one piece of, in a later war almost ubiquitous, kit would have changed the face of that war, namely, the hand held walkie-talkie.

I have little time for 'Futility'.
Dave.