A night bomber is a bomber aircraft intended specifically for carrying out bombing missions at night. The term is now mostly of historical significance. Night bombing began in World War I and was widespread during World War II. A number of modern aircraft types are designed primarily for nighttime bombing, but air forces no longer refer to them as night bombers. More common terms today include interdictor and strike fighter, and such aircraft tend to have all-weather, day-or-night capabilities.
Strategic bombing and night bombing were new in World War I, and there was much experimentation at night with aircraft such as the Gotha G.IV, Gotha G.V, Handley Page Type O, and various giant airplanes such as the Riesenflugzeuge and the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets. Navigation was difficult and precision was almost nonexistent but the psychological effect was strong. Night bombing worked as a terror weapon.
Prior to the introduction of radar, aircraft flying at night were nearly impossible to locate accurately enough for attack. Acoustic location was used to obtain preliminary rough coordinates. Searchlights scanning the sky could illuminate aircraft by chance and might track them long enough for anti-aircraft artillery to fire a few shots. Alternatively, night fighters were used for interception; they either cooperated with searchlights or tried to spot the bombers in the moonlight. The success rate of such defences were so low that it was widely believed that "The bomber will always get through", in the words of British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Since World War I, the bomber had been seen as a terror weapon, and was later seen as a primary strategic weapon of total war. As Baldwin later said, their primary purpose was to "kill the enemy's women and children more rapidly than they killed yours". [1]
As aircraft capabilities grew, so did their defensive firepower. By the mid-1930s, opinions were changing and the idea of daylight raids of aircraft providing their own self-defense came to the fore. In practice these aircraft proved entirely vulnerable to modern fighter aircraft and were rapidly returned to the night bombing role. However, these aircraft had not been designed for night navigation, and were generally lacking any effectiveness in these missions:
I don't think we realized at the time that our equipment wasn't really up to it. They'd forgotten to design or produce any navigation equipment, so the Wellington bomber, which was intended to be a day bomber, had to operate at night because it was so vulnerable during the day. It had virtually the same equipment that the Tiger Moth had, with one exception—the Wellington had a loop aerial. Here we were flying 500 or 600 miles over enemy territory, trying to locate a target in total blackout, often with cloud below us and a lot of industrial haze. It's not surprising that our bombers were 5, 10 miles away. There was no bomber stream. We were largely on our own, perhaps 10 or 14 aircraft at intervals.
- —John Gee, Bomber Command pilot [2]
The USAAF was the only force to press ahead with daylight strategic bombing raids during World War II. This proved as disastrous as the earlier Royal Air Force and Luftwaffe attempts, and had to be called off in late 1943. The arrival of the P-51 Mustang fighter in the "bomber escort" role allowed these missions to start again in 1944, and the fighter was so successful that the Luftwaffe fighter force was almost wiped out by the end of spring. Later on, the RAF also began to take part in daylight bombing raids as well, cementing the defeat.
The USAAF also applied the same concept with the bombing raids against Japan in June 1944-early 1945 with daylight precision bombing against Japanese industrial facilities using Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers. However, the results weren't successful because of the frequent jetstream blowing the high explosives off target, navigation problems, anti-aircraft fire, and searchlights, resulting in high losses among the B-29 crewmen. As a result, in February 1945, the USAAF switched to low-level incendiary raids against Japanese cities, most of them took place at night. The most devastating air raid in the war was the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9–10, 1945, which destroyed 16 square miles, killed 100,000 Japanese, and made a million people homeless. [3] [4]
Strategic bombing is a systematically organized and executed attack from the air which can utilize strategic bombers, long- or medium-range missiles, or nuclear-armed fighter-bomber aircraft to attack targets deemed vital to the enemy's war-making capability. It is a military strategy used in total war with the goal of defeating the enemy by destroying its morale, its economic ability to produce and transport materiel to the theatres of military operations, or both. The term terror bombing is used to describe the strategic bombing of civilian targets without military value, in the hope of damaging an enemy's morale.
Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs. In popular usage, any act in which an incendiary device is used to initiate a fire is often described as a "firebombing".
A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, penetrators, fighter-bombers, and attack aircraft, which are used in air interdiction operations to attack enemy combatants and military equipment, strategic bombers are designed to fly into enemy territory to destroy strategic targets. In addition to strategic bombing, strategic bombers can be used for tactical missions. There are currently only three countries that operate strategic bombers: the United States, Russia and China.
Bomber Command is an organisational military unit, generally subordinate to the air force of a country. The best known were in Britain and the United States. A Bomber Command is generally used for strategic bombing, and is composed of bombers.
Heavy bombers are bomber aircraft capable of delivering the largest payload of air-to-ground weaponry and longest range of their era. Archetypal heavy bombers have therefore usually been among the largest and most powerful military aircraft at any point in time. In the second half of the 20th century, heavy bombers were largely superseded by strategic bombers, which were often even larger in size, had much longer ranges and were capable of delivering nuclear bombs.
The Eighth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) is a numbered air force (NAF) of the United States Air Force's Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). It is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The command serves as Air Forces Strategic – Global Strike, one of the air components of United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM). The Eighth Air Force includes the heart of America's heavy bomber force: the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, the Rockwell B-1 Lancer supersonic bomber, and the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bomber aircraft.
Operation Matterhorn was a military operation of the United States Army Air Forces in World War II for strategic bombing by Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers based in India, Ceylon, and China. Targets included industrial facilities in Japan, China and Southeast Asia. The B-29s were based in India but staged through bases around Chengdu in China's Sichuan province. Since the Japanese had cut the Burma Road in 1942, the only line of communications with China was over "the Hump", as the air ferry route to China over the Himalayas was called. All the fuel, ammunition and supplies used by American forces in China had to be flown in.
Precision bombing is the attempted aerial bombing of a target with some degree of accuracy, with the aim of maximising target damage or limiting collateral damage. Its strategic counterpart is carpet bombing. An example would be destroying a single building in a built up area causing minimal damage to the surroundings. Precision bombing was initially tried by both the Allied and Central Powers during World War I, however it was found to be ineffective because the technology did not allow for sufficient accuracy. Therefore, the air forces turned to area bombardment, which killed civilians. Since the War, the development and adoption of guided munitions has greatly increased the accuracy of aerial bombing. Because the accuracy achieved in bombing is dependent on the available technology, the "precision" of precision bombing is relative to the time period.
The Pointblank directive authorised the initiation of Operation Pointblank, the code name for the part of the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive intended to cripple or destroy the German aircraft fighter strength, thus drawing it away from frontline operations and ensuring it would not be an obstacle to the invasion of Northwest Europe. The Pointblank directive of 14 June 1943 ordered RAF Bomber Command and the U.S. Eighth Air Force to bomb specific targets such as aircraft factories, and the order was confirmed when Allied leaders met at the Quebec Conference in August 1943. Up to that point, the RAF and USAAF had mostly been attacking the German industry in their own way – the British by broad night attacks on industrial areas, and the US in "precision attacks" by day on specific targets. The operational execution of the Directive was left to the commanders of the forces. As such, even after the directive, the British continued their night attacks. The majority of the attacks on German fighter production and combat with the fighters were conducted by the USAAF.
Operation Argument, after the war dubbed Big Week, was a sequence of raids by the United States Army Air Forces and RAF Bomber Command from 20 to 25 February 1944, as part of the Combined Bomber Offensive against Nazi Germany. The objective of Operation Argument was to destroy aircraft factories in central and southern Germany in order to defeat the Luftwaffe before the Normandy landings during Operation Overlord were to take place later in 1944.
The Twentieth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) (20th AF) is a numbered air force of the United States Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). It is headquartered at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming.
The Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) was an Allied offensive of strategic bombing during World War II in Europe. The primary portion of the CBO was directed against Luftwaffe targets which were the highest priority from June 1943 to 1 April 1944. The subsequent highest priority campaigns were against V-weapon installations and petroleum, oil, and lubrication (POL) plants. Additional CBO targets included railyards and other transportation targets, particularly prior to the invasion of Normandy and, along with army equipment, in the final stages of the war in Europe.
During the Pacific War, Allied forces conducted air raids on Japan from 1942 to 1945, causing extensive destruction to the country's cities and killing between 241,000 and 900,000 people. During the first years of the Pacific War these attacks were limited to the Doolittle Raid in April 1942 and small-scale raids on military positions in the Kuril Islands from mid-1943. Strategic bombing raids began in June 1944 and continued until the end of the war in August 1945. Allied naval and land-based tactical air units also attacked Japan during 1945.
The Defence of the Reich is the name given to the strategic defensive aerial campaign fought by the Luftwaffe of Nazi Germany over German-occupied Europe and Germany during World War II against the Allied strategic bombing campaign. Its aim was to prevent the destruction of German civilians, military and civil industries by the Western Allies. The day and night air battles over Germany during the war involved thousands of aircraft, units and aerial engagements to counter the Allies bombing campaigns. The campaign was one of the longest in the history of aerial warfare and with the Battle of the Atlantic and the Allied naval blockade of Germany was the longest of the war. The Luftwaffe fighter force defended the airspace of German-occupied Europe against attack, first by RAF Bomber Command and then against the RAF and United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the Combined Bomber Offensive.
The 330th Bombardment Group was a bomber group of the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. It was formed on 1 July 1942 at Salt Lake City Army Air Base, Utah. Initially, the group was equipped with the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, and served as a training unit within the United States until April 1944. On 1 April 1944, the group re-formed as a Boeing B-29 Superfortress-equipped unit as part of the 314th Bombardment Wing and trained for deployment to the Pacific Theater against Japan.
The bombing of Yawata on the night of 15–16 June 1944 marked the beginning of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) strategic bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands during the Pacific War and was the first such raid to employ strategic bombers. The raid was undertaken by 75 Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers staging from bases in China. Only 47 of these aircraft dropped bombs near the raid's primary target, the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata in northern Kyūshū, and little damage was caused. Five B-29s were lost in accidents during the operation and two were destroyed by Japanese aircraft.
The Bombing of Singapore (1944–1945) was a military campaign conducted by the Allied air forces during World War II. United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) long-range bomber units conducted 11 air raids on Japanese-occupied Singapore between November 1944 and March 1945. Most of these raids targeted the island's naval base and dockyard facilities, and minelaying missions were conducted in nearby waters. After the American bombers were redeployed, the British Royal Air Force assumed responsibility for minelaying operations near Singapore and these continued until 24 May 1945.
During World War II, a series of Japanese air attacks on the Mariana Islands took place between November 1944 and January 1945. These raids targeted United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) bases and sought to disrupt the bombing of Japan by Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers operating from the islands. The Japanese lost 37 aircraft during this operation, but destroyed 11 B-29s and damaged a further 43. Preparations were also made for commando raids on the bases in early and mid-1945 but these did not go ahead.
On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city. This attack was code-named Operation Meetinghouse by the USAAF and is known as the Tokyo Great Air Raid in Japan. Bombs dropped from 279 Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers burned out much of eastern Tokyo. More than 90,000 and possibly over 100,000 Japanese people were killed, mostly civilians, and one million were left homeless, making it the most destructive single air attack in human history. The Japanese air and civil defenses proved largely inadequate; 14 American aircraft and 96 airmen were lost.
Operation Boomerang was a partially successful air raid by the United States Army Air Forces' (USAAF) XX Bomber Command against oil refining facilities in Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies during World War II. The attack took place on the night of 10/11 August 1944 and involved attempts to bomb an oil refinery at Palembang and lay mines to interdict the Musi River.