Strategic Bombing - Strategic Bombing Events

Strategic Bombing Events

Among the controversial instances of strategic bombing (and it should be noted that there is still significant controversy over whether all of these events even constitute strategic bombing, as opposed to other forms, such as terror bombing or tactical bombing) are:

  • Strategic bombing of "uncivilized tribes" during the British mandate of Iraq
  • Spanish Civil War
    • The Bombing of Guernica: the first aerial bombardment in history in which a civilian population was targeted with the apparent intent of producing civilian casualties.
  • World War II
    • The Japanese bombing of Wuhan
    • The Japanese bombing of Chongqing
    • The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
    • The German bombing of Warsaw
    • The German bombing of Rotterdam
    • German attacks on the UK during The Blitz and afterwards, through the V-1 and V-2 attacks in the last year of the war.
    • The German bombing of Belgrade
    • The German bombing of Moscow.
    • Allied bombing of Hamburg
    • Allied bombing of Berlin
    • Allied bombing of Dresden
    • Allied bombing of Milan
    • United States bombing of Tokyo
    • United States bombing of Kobe
    • United States atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  • Vietnam War
    • United States bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail
    • United States bombing of Hanoi
    • United States bombing of Cambodia
    • United States bombing of Vietnam's dikes
  • Operation Desert Storm (Liberation of Kuwait Jan/Feb 1991)
  • Yugoslav Wars (1991–1999)
    • NATO bombing of Republika Srpska (1995) (Operation Deliberate Force)
    • Kosovo War (1999)
      • NATO bombing of industry and other civilian infrastructure in Serbia. Examples include the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade (claimed to have been done by mistake) and the deliberate bombing of the main TV center in Belgrade.
  • Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) invasion of Iraq.
    • Precision laser and GPS guided bombs were used extensively, not only to damage and destroy Saddam Hussein's army but also to damage infrastructure such as communications, utilities, and various government buildings. The campaign moved into asymmetric warfare once strategic targets no longer existed or were not viable targets.

Read more about this topic:  Strategic Bombing

Famous quotes containing the words strategic, bombing and/or events:

    “If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
    —Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    “The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.”
    —Ivan Illich (b. 1926)

    “The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
    —John Ashbery (b. 1927)