Strategic Bomber - First and Second World Wars

First and Second World Wars

The first strategic bombing efforts took place during World War I (1914-18), initially by Russians with their Sikorsky Ilya Muromets bomber (the first heavy four-engine aircraft), and by the Germans using zeppelins or long-range multi-engine Gotha aircraft. Both reached England on bombing raids by 1915, forcing the British to create extensive defense systems including some of the first anti-aircraft guns that were often used with searchlights to highlight the enemy machines overhead. Late in the war, American fliers under the command of Brig. Gen. William Mitchell were developing multi-aircraft "mass" bombing missions behind German lines, although the Armistice ended full realization of what was being planned.

Study of strategic bombing continued in the interwar years. Many books and articles predicted a fearful prospect for any future war, paced by political fears such as those expressed by British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin who told the House of Commons early in the 1930s that "the bomber will always get through" no matter what defensive systems were undertaken. It was widely believed by the late 1930s that strategic "terror" bombing of cities in any war would quickly result in devastating losses and might decide a conflict in a matter of days or weeks. But theory far exceeded what most air forces could actually put into the air. Germany focused on short-range tactical bombers. Britain's Royal Air Force began developing four-engine long-range bombers only in the late 1930s. The U.S. Army Air Corps (Army Air Forces as of mid-1941) was severely limited by small budgets in the late 1930s, and only barely saved the Boeing B-17 bomber that would soon be vital. The equally-important B-24 first flew in 1939. Both aircraft would provide the bulk of the American bomber force that made the Allied daylight bombing of Nazi Germany possible in 1943-45.

At the start of World War II, initial so-called "strategic" bombing was carried out by medium bombers, typically twin-engined ones with several gun positions, but only limited bomb-carrying capacity and range. Larger two and four-engined designs were being developed in both Britain and the U.S., however, and these began to replace the smaller aircraft by 1941-42. After American entry into the war late in 1941, the U.S. 8th Air Force began to develop a daylight bombing capacity using improved B-17 and B-24 four-engine aircraft. The RAF concentrated its efforts on night bombing. But neither force was able to develop adequate bombsights or tactics to allow for often-bragged "pinpoint" accuracy. The post-war U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey studies supported the overall notion of strategic bombing, but underlined many of its shortcomings as well. Attempts to create pioneering examples of "smart bombs" resulted in the deployed Azon ordnance, used in the European Theatre and CBI theatre from B-24s.

Following the untimely death of the top German advocate for strategic bombing, General Walther Wever in early June 1936, the focus of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe bomber forces, the so-named Kampfgeschwader (bomber wings) became the battlefield support of the Wehrmacht Heer as part of the general Blitzkrieg form of warfare, carried out with both medium bombers such as the Heinkel He 111, and Schnellbombers such as the Junkers Ju 88A. General Wever's support of the Ural bomber project before WW II's start dwindled after his passing, with the only aircraft design that could closely match the Allied bomber force's own aircraft - the early November 1937-origin Heinkel He 177, deployed in its initial form in 1941-42, hampered by a RLM requirement for the He 177A to also perform medium-angle dive bombing, not rescinded until September 1942 - unable to perform either function properly, with a powerplant selection that led to endless problems with engine fires. The March 1942-origin, trans-Atlantic ranged Amerika Bomber program sought to ameliorate the lack of a seriously long-ranged bomber for the Luftwaffe, but resulted with only three Messerschmitt-built and a pair of Junkers-built prototypes ever flown, and no operational "heavy bombers" for strategic use for the Third Reich, outside of the roughly one thousand examples of the He 177 that were built.

By the end of the Second World War in 1945, the "heavy" bomber, epitomized by the British Avro Lancaster and American B-32 used in the Pacific Theater, showed what could be accomplished by area bombing of Japan's cities and the often small and dispersed factories within them. Under Major General Curtis LeMay, the U.S. 20th Air Force, based in the Mariana Islands, undertook low-level incendiary bombing missions, results of which were soon measured in the number of square miles destroyed. Even before the August 1945 atomic bomb missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, strategic bombing had withered Japan's ability to continue fighting.