Who came up with the concept of Strategic Bombing?

Strategic bombing is designed to destroy a country's ability to wage war by bombing from the air the enemy's infrastructure, such as factories, railways, and refineries, so essential for the production and supply of war materials. The strategy was, of course, heavily employed by the Luftwaffe, RAF Bomber Command and the USAAF during WW2, but the original concept was introduced by the Royal Navy in WW1. It was agreed that the Royal Flying Corps would concentrate on reconnaissance of the Western Front whilst the nascent Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) would focus on home defence, defence of the dockyards and attacks behind enemy lines on railway yards and Zeppelin factories.

One such raid was that of November 1914 on the Zeppelin factories in Friedrichshafen when a flight of three RNAS Avro 504 aircraft left Belfort on the French border to skirt Switzerland and to cross Lake Constance. The aircraft had been shipped to France in utmost secrecy before being reassembled for effectively their maiden flights on the raid, a 250-mile round trip. It was the first attack of the war on German soil. Unfortunately, the raid was only a partial success, but others were to follow. The raid was daring and the approach to the sheds had to be done at a height barely above the lake. The three pilots involved were all decorated, but the squadron commander was shot down and made a prisoner of war. For more details and to learn about other developments in early naval aviation, do read my 5* historical thriller, The Wings of the Wind.