No major military operation today is launched without the swift and ferocious application of air power. It was not always so. Soon after World War I, a dispute broke out in the United States between the visionary proponents of bomber aircraft and those who were convinced of the “improbability of a modern battleship being either destroyed or completely put out of action by aerial bombs”. Alexander Seversky, a Russian–American aviation pioneer, dramatically proved that aircraft could easily sink battleships.

Alexander Nikolaievich Prokofiev de Seversky was born in Tbilisi, then part of the Russian Empire, on June 7, 1894. His father was one of the first Russians to own an aircraft. He taught Alexander by age 14 to fly on a modified Blériot XI. Alexander graduated in 1914 with an aeronautical engineering degree and was a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy when World War I began. In 1915 he was reassigned to an aviation unit in the Baltic Fleet as a combat pilot. On his first mission he attacked a German destroyer but was shot down by enemy anti-aircraft guns. He was badly injured in the crash and the doctors were forced to amputate his leg. This brought an early halt to his military aviation career. However, he refused to remain earthbound and made a spectacular, unauthorized flight at an air show. The military authorities took a dim view of this act of “defiance” and he was promptly arrested. It took the personal intervention of Tsar Nicholas II to get him released and back in flying. In July 1916, Seversky returned to active combat duty. He shot down his first enemy plane within three days and quickly scored three more aerial victories. On October 14, 1916, he was forced down in German territory but managed to escape and made it back to safety. In all, he flew 57 combat missions and shot down at least six German aircraft (by some accounts 13) to become one of Russia’s top aces of the War.

Then Russia was torn apart by the Bolshevik Revolution. In early 1918, Seversky was sent to the United States to serve as assistant naval attaché at the Russian Embassy. He decided it was too dangerous for him to return to Russia and elected to remain in the US, becoming a US citizen in 1927. Soon after his arrival in America, Seversky became an assistant to General Billy Mitchell, one of the foremost advocates of air power. Mitchell attracted a great deal of criticism by advocating increased investment in air power, declaring that this would be vital in future wars. His claim that bombers could easily sink battleships was viewed with intense scepticism till he organised a series of bombing runs against stationary ships and proved the point. Seversky was his right hand man in the project.

Seversky was also active as an aviator and an inventor. He received his first patent for air-to-air refuelling in 1921 and developed the first gyroscopically stabilised bombsight, together with Sperry Gyroscope Company, in 1923. The sale of this capable bombsight brought in enough money to establish the Seversky Aero Corporation, later renamed the Seversky Aircraft Corporation. The company’s first design, the SEV-3, had its maiden flight in 1933. The SEV-3 was an all-metal, three-seat monoplane amphibian, with a low-mounted cantilever wing. Its hydraulically operated landing gear could be used on land as well as on water. It set numerous speed records at the 1933-39 National Air Races, including a world speed record on September 15, 1935, of over 370 kmph for piston-engine amphibious aircraft. Seversky also set a transcontinental speed record in 1938.

As war clouds again began to gather over Europe, Seversky became engrossed in formulating his theories of air warfare. His words, “Only air power can defeat air power. The actual elimination or even stalemating of an attacking air force can be achieved only by a superior air force,” set the tone for his concept of domination of the air in all military conflict. Soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, he wrote Victory Through Air Power, which strongly advocated strategic air bombardment. It became an instant bestseller, with five million copies sold. According to Seversky, air power was the key to victory. He declared that the United States was not prepared to face the revolutionary war-fighting techniques that aircraft were throwing up. American fighter planes were inferior to those of its potential enemies in speed, range, altitude capability and armament, notwithstanding the hollow claims of the government.

Alexander de Seversky died on August 24, 1974. Apart from his fame due to aviation he became an icon for the disabled, saying, “I discovered early that the hardest thing to overcome is not a physical disability but the mental condition which it induces. The world, I found, has a way of taking a man pretty much at his own rating. If he permits his loss to make him embarrassed and apologetic, he will draw embarrassment from others. But if he gains his own respect, the respect of those around him comes easily.”