In the early twentieth century, the technology of flight changed warfare. Writers argued that the main strategic risk to Britain was the possibility of a sudden, destructive aerial bombardment of Britain’s cities. For the first time, The Next War in the Air draws on archival documents and publications from 1908-1941 to reconstruct the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s.