the German generals. By the end of the war MI7b had distributed almost 26 million leaflets. In August 1918, the famous Italian nationalist writer, poet and fighter pilot Gabriele D'Annunzio, organized the Flight over Vienna: a famous propaganda operation during the war, leading 9 Ansaldo SVA planes in a 1,100-kilometre (700 mi) round trip to drop 50,000 propaganda leaflets on the Austro-Hungarian capital. The Germans began shooting the leaflet-dropping pilots, prompting the British to develop an alternative method of delivery. A. Fleming invented the unmanned leaflet balloon in 1917, and these were used extensively in the latter part of the War, with over 48,000 units produced. The hydrogen balloon would drift over no-man's land to land in the enemy trenches. At least one in seven of these leaflets were not handed in by the soldiers to their superiors, despite severe penalties for that offence. Even General Paul von Hindenburg admitted that "Unsuspectingly, many thousands consumed the poison" and POWs admitted to being disillusioned by the propaganda leaflets that depicted the use of German troops as mere cannon fodder. In 1915, the British began airdropping a regular leaflet newspaper Le Courrier de l'Air for civilians in German-occupied France and Belgium. World War II Distribution of airborne leaflet propaganda was used by both Allied and Axis forces in the Second World War, starting with a Royal Air Force leaflet drop over the port of Kiel in September 1939. During the Phoney War most of the Royal Air Force's operations consisted of airborne leaflet dropping, as the United Kingdom wanted Nazi Germany to be the first country to begin strategic bombing of civilian areas in order to avoid deterring neutral powers such as the United States from supporting the Allies. The first proposal to construct a special bomb with which to disperse airborne leaflets was put forward by British air force officers during World War II. The most successful "leaflet bomb" model of the War was the Monroe bomb, invented in 1943 by USAAF Captain James Monroe of the 305th Bombardment Group. It was developed from laminated paper containers that had been used to transport M-17 incendiary bombs. The British improved the use of hydrogen balloons to carry leaflets over German lines. Some of the V-1 flying bombs launched by the Germans against southern England carried leaflets – they were contained in a cardboard tube at the tail of a missile. This would