{"id":30641611,"date":"2026-11-01T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T09:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/giulio-gavotti-first-aerial-bombing-1911-libya-ain-zara-taube\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T10:06:19","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T09:06:19","slug":"giulio-gavotti-first-aerial-bombing-1911-libya-ain-zara-taube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/it\/giulio-gavotti-first-aerial-bombing-1911-libya-ain-zara-taube\/","title":{"rendered":"Giulio Gavotti: The First Bomb Dropped From an Aeroplane, 1911"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<!-- mfsh:top -->\r\n\r\n<style>\r\n.mfsh-trigger{display:inline-flex;align-items:center;gap:10px;height:44px;padding:0 18px;margin:0 0 26px;border:2px solid 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A small monoplane drones above the palms at roughly 600 feet. In the cockpit, a young Italian second lieutenant reaches into a leather pouch, takes out something the size of a grapefruit, screws in a detonator and lets it fall over the side.<\/p>\r\n<p>His name is Giulio Gavotti, and he has just carried out the first bombing raid ever flown from an aeroplane. Four hand grenades, perhaps two kilograms each, tossed from an aeroplane at Ottoman troops in the Libyan desert. Nobody on the ground was expecting it, because until that morning nobody anywhere had ever done it.<\/p>\r\n<p>It happened 115 years ago today. Every bomber that followed, from the Gotha to the B-52, traces its job description back to that pouch.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f4f6f9;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:18px 22px;margin:28px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;color:#0d1117;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;color:#333\"><strong>Date:<\/strong> 1 November 1911<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;color:#333\"><strong>Pilot:<\/strong> Sottotenente (Second Lieutenant) Giulio Gavotti, Italian Army<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;color:#333\"><strong>War:<\/strong> Italo-Turkish War, 29 September 1911 to 18 October 1912<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;color:#333\"><strong>Aircraft:<\/strong> An early Etrich Taube monoplane in most accounts; some give a Bl\u00e9riot<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;color:#333\"><strong>Weapons:<\/strong> Four Cipelli grenades of roughly 2 kg (about 4 lb), dropped by hand<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;color:#333\"><strong>Targets:<\/strong> Ottoman positions at the Ain Zara and Tagiura (Tajura) oases near Tripoli<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;color:#333\"><strong>Altitude:<\/strong> About 600 feet<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">A war with aeroplanes in it, for the first time<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 29 September 1911 to seize the provinces that would become Libya. It was a colonial war in most respects, fought with battleships, artillery and infantry. But the Italian Army had also shipped a handful of aeroplanes and pilots across the Mediterranean, one of the very first times an army had taken heavier-than-air machines to war.<\/p>\r\n<p>They were meant to look, not to fight. On 23 October 1911 Captain Carlo Piazza flew over the Turkish lines on what Wikipedia and most histories record as the world's first aerial reconnaissance mission. Within days Italian aircraft were coming back with rifle bullets in their wings, and the Ottoman side would go on to claim a first of its own: the first aeroplane brought down by fire from the ground, with rifles.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/11\/italian-artillery-battery-near-tripoli-1911.jpg\" alt=\"Italian artillery battery dug in near Tripoli in 1911\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Italian artillery near Tripoli in 1911. The ground war around the city was the setting for the first reconnaissance flights and the first bombing raid. Wikimedia Commons, public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Gavotti had trained as a pilot before the war; a surviving photograph shows him at the controls of a Farman biplane in Rome in 1910. In Libya he was one of a tiny group of officers flying fragile monoplanes over a front where nobody had a doctrine for what an aeroplane should do. He decided to write one, and he told his father exactly what he had in mind in a letter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/11\/giulio-gavotti-portrait.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"flex-shrink:0\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/11\/giulio-gavotti-portrait.jpg\" alt=\"Giulio Gavotti\" style=\"width:96px;height:96px;border-radius:50%;object-fit:cover;object-position:center;display:block;border:2px solid #ddd\"><\/a><div><em>&ldquo;Today I have decided to try to throw bombs from the aeroplane. It is the first time that we will try this and if I succeed, I will be really pleased to be the first person to do it.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Giulio Gavotti<\/strong> &mdash; Italian Army pilot, letter to his father, 1911<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Four grenades and a leather pouch<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The weapons were Cipelli grenades, named after Lieutenant Giuseppe Cipelli, who developed them. They were small spherical bombs filled with explosive, each weighing around two kilograms, about four pounds. Gavotti carried them in a leather pouch in the cockpit. There was no bomb rack, no bombsight and no release mechanism. He armed each one by screwing in the detonator, then threw it out by hand.<\/p>\r\n<p>His own description of the method, in the translation of his letter that historians quote, is brutally practical: \"I take the bomb with my right hand, pull off the security tag and throw the bomb out, avoiding the wing.\" The wing mattered. A monoplane of 1911 was mostly wood, wire and fabric, and a grenade bouncing off it would have ended the experiment very quickly.<\/p>\r\n<p>Accounts agree he dropped four grenades, three on one oasis and one on another, but they disagree about which got the larger share. Even Wikipedia's pages are inconsistent about Ain Zara and Tagiura. What every source agrees on is the result Gavotti reported when he landed: everybody, he wrote, was satisfied.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MwIFDl4QBmI\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#666;font-style:italic\">HistoryPod's short account of 1 November 1911, the first aerial bombing in the Italo-Turkish War.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Which aeroplane, exactly?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Most accounts, including Wikipedia and NPR's centenary piece, say Gavotti flew an early Etrich Taube. The Taube, German for \"dove\", was designed by Igo Etrich in 1909 and first flew in 1910, with a distinctive bird-like wing that made it famously stable. That stability was exactly what a pilot needed if he planned to let go of the controls long enough to arm a grenade.<\/p>\r\n<p>Some histories instead put him in a Bl\u00e9riot monoplane, the type that made up most of the Italian Army's small fleet in Libya. Surviving campaign photographs, like the one at the top of this page, show Italian Army Bl\u00e9riots in Libya. The honest answer is that the Taube is the majority view, and the question is not fully settled.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/11\/etrich-taube-monoplane-early-1910s.jpg\" alt=\"An early Etrich Taube monoplane on the ground with its bird-like wing\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">An early Etrich monoplane of the Taube family. Its dove-shaped wing gave the stability that made hand-dropping bombs possible. Not Gavotti's aircraft. Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The protest, and the precedent<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The raid did little physical damage. Historian Gerard De Groot, quoted by NPR, concluded that no Turks were injured. The Ottoman government nevertheless protested, claiming the bombs had fallen on a field hospital. Italy's answer was legal rather than moral: the 1899 Hague Convention banned dropping projectiles from balloons, and an aeroplane, Rome argued, was not a balloon.<\/p>\r\n<p>The international press was less sure. The arguments that would follow bombing for the rest of the century, about accuracy, about civilians and about whether war from the air was fair, began in the newspapers within days.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;a gross defilement of the gentlemanly art of war&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Gerard J. De Groot<\/strong> &mdash; Historian, in <em>The Bomb<\/em>, as quoted by NPR, on how the raid was received<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Inside the Italian Army the verdict was the opposite. The aeroplane had shown it could do more than look. Italian aviators went on to fly further reconnaissance and bombing missions before the war ended with the Treaty of Ouchy on 18 October 1912, and the lesson was not lost on the general staffs of Europe two years later.<\/p>\r\n<p>Italy's military aviation itself went on to become today's <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/air-forces\/italian-air-force\/\">Italian Air Force<\/a>, founded as an independent service in 1923. Gavotti's hand-thrown grenades sit at the very start of that lineage, and of every air force's.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xJepy18PAlM\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#666;font-style:italic\">The Great War channel's documentary on the Italo-Turkish War, the conflict that saw the first military reconnaissance flights and the first air raid.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why 1 November 1911 still matters<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Gavotti's raid was tiny. Four grenades, a few kilograms of explosive, no casualties anyone could confirm. But it changed the question. Before 1 November 1911, the aeroplane was a scout. After it, the aeroplane was a weapon, and every argument about air power since, from strategic bombing to precision strikes, starts from the moment a second lieutenant leaned over the side of his cockpit.<\/p>\r\n<p>Piazza's reconnaissance flight a week earlier deserves its own place in that story, because the eyes came before the bombs.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Y695pINQxJg\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#666;font-style:italic\">HistoryPod on 23 October 1911, when Captain Carlo Piazza flew the first aircraft mission in war.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: Wikipedia (Giulio Gavotti; Italo-Turkish War; Etrich Taube); BBC report by Alan Johnston, republished by the Atlantic Council (2011); NPR (March 2011); Historic Wings (November 2012).<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->\r\n\r\n<button type=\"button\" class=\"mfsh-trigger mfsh-bottom\" data-mfsh-placement=\"bottom\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"><svg><use href=\"#mfsh-i-share\"\/><\/svg>Share this story<\/button>\r\n\r\n<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>Who carried out the first aerial bombing from an aeroplane?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti of the Italian Army carried out the first bombing raid from an aeroplane on 1 November 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War. He dropped four hand grenades by hand from his monoplane onto Ottoman positions at oases near Tripoli, in what is now Libya.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What bombs did Giulio Gavotti drop in 1911?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Giulio Gavotti dropped four Cipelli grenades, small spherical bombs of roughly 2 kg (about 4 lb) each. He carried them in a leather pouch, armed each one by screwing in a detonator and threw them over the side by hand from about 600 feet.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What aircraft did Giulio Gavotti fly on the first bombing raid?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Most accounts, including Wikipedia and NPR, say Giulio Gavotti flew an early Etrich Taube monoplane, an Austrian design with a bird-shaped wing. Some histories say he flew a Bl\u00e9riot, the most common type in the Italian Army's fleet in Libya, so the question is not fully settled.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Where did the first aerial bombing take place?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The first aerial bombing took place over the Ain Zara and Tagiura (Tajura) oases near Tripoli, in Ottoman-held Libya, on 1 November 1911. Accounts disagree on which oasis received three of Gavotti's four grenades and which received the fourth.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Did the first aerial bombing in 1911 kill anyone?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">No casualties from Gavotti's 1911 raid are confirmed. Historian Gerard De Groot concluded that no Turks were injured. The Ottoman government protested that the bombs had hit a field hospital, while Italy argued the 1899 Hague ban on dropping projectiles from balloons did not cover aeroplanes.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What was the first military reconnaissance flight?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Captain Carlo Piazza of the Italian Army flew what is recorded as the world's first aerial reconnaissance mission over Turkish lines on 23 October 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War. Gavotti's first bombing raid followed nine days later, on 1 November 1911.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Who carried out the first aerial bombing from an aeroplane?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti of the Italian Army carried out the first bombing raid from an aeroplane on 1 November 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War. He dropped four hand grenades by hand from his monoplane onto Ottoman positions at oases near Tripoli, in what is now Libya.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What bombs did Giulio Gavotti drop in 1911?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Giulio Gavotti dropped four Cipelli grenades, small spherical bombs of roughly 2 kg (about 4 lb) each. 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Gavotti's first bombing raid followed nine days later, on 1 November 1911.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/roland-garros-aviator-first-fighter-pilot\/\">Roland Garros Never Played the French Open<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/military-aviation-history-zeppelin-to-sixth-generation\/\">Wings of War: From Zeppelin to Sixth Generation<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/cal-rodgers-vin-fiz-first-transcontinental-flight-1911\/\">The Amateur Who Crashed His Way Across America<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Share this story The morning of 1 November 1911 is quiet over the oases outside Tripoli. A small monoplane drones above the palms at roughly 600 feet. In the cockpit, a young Italian second lieutenant reaches into a leather pouch, takes out something the size of a grapefruit, screws in a detonator and lets it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":30641279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30641611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Giulio Gavotti: The First Aerial Bombing, 1911 | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On 1 November 1911 Giulio Gavotti threw four grenades from his monoplane over Libya: the first bombing raid ever flown from an aeroplane.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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