The laser-guided bomb dominated both the battlefield, the counter-air campaign against Iraqi airfields, strikes against command and control and leadership targets, and the anti-bridge and rail campaign. As soon as they appeared, then, Kamikazes revealed their power to force significant changes in Allied naval planning and operations, despite relatively small numbers. The American doctrine of strategic daylight precision bombing failed because it rested on three premises that would be tested in World War II. The Kamikaze was the deadliest aerial anti-shipping threat faced by Allied surface warfare forces in the war. With every passing month, more Flying Fortresses and Liberators entered the pipeline, and General Eaker continued to believe his rapidly increasing flock of “self-protecting” bombers would be able to successfully reach, bomb and return from targets over the Reich itself. Not only would bombers continue to strike key aircraft industries, but increasing numbers of American fighter escorts would aggressively attack the Luftwaffe as the Germans rose to attack heavy bomber formations. 4. This single 500 lb (230 kg) general-purpose bomb represented one quarter of one percent of the 376 bombs dropped over Yawata on that mission. Petroleum targets and transportation systems dropped down the priority list, while submarine targets remained close to the top. For eight months planes of the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities. Despite radar detection and cuing, airborne interception and attrition, and massive anti-aircraft barrages, a distressing 14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; nearly 8.5 percent of all ships hit by Kamikazes sank. An example of the difficulties of precision bombing was a raid in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 1944 by 47 B-29's on Japan's Yawata Steel Works from bases in China. Frustrated by erratic weather (which limited daylight raids to about 10 a month) and crew and aircraft shortages, the Eighth Air Force did not mount a very impressive effort until the summer of 1943. The disappointing Korean bridge-bombing experience stimulated the Navy to pursue development of the postwar Bullpup program, the first mass-produced air-to-surface guided missile. A total of 67 percent of all such targets engaged were destroyed; 14 percent experienced moderate to severe damage, 16 percent light damage, and only 3 percent were judged to have experienced no damage. On opening night of the war, attacks by strike aircraft and cruise missiles against air defense and command and control facilities opened up Iraq for subsequent conventional attackers. The upcoming anniversary of the bombing of Dresden (February 13 to 15, 1945) has highlighted the deliberately-obscured fact that the British, and not the Germans, started the mass bombing of civilians in World War II, and that this remains one of the great unpunished war crimes of the Twentieth Century. Between October 8 and 14, 1943, the Eighth Air Force flew 1,342 heavy bomber sorties, losing a total of 152 bombers (11.3 percent), with another 6 percent receiving heavy damage. Air attacks by F-15E's and Marine A-6 Intruders in the easternmost section of the theater averaged over thirty artillery pieces or armored vehicles destroyed per night. On the other hand, since it took 1-2 bombs to sink an AK in reality, the increased accuracy may not have as serious an effect as might be expected. The British reasoned that carpet-bombing would destroy civilian morale. Unlike 'dumb' bombs, LGB's released from medium to high altitude were highly accurate. During prewar testing the Norden demonstrated a circular error probable (CEP) of 75 feet (23 m), an astonishing performance for that period. Operations Analysis in the U.S. Army Eighth Air Force in World War II By Charles W. McArthur By Dr, Tuttle's USAAF Report 11 July 1943 - (Geoffrey Tuttle. Since most of their early targets were in France and within U.S. fighter range, the Eighth Air Force bombers had fighter support on many of their raids, and the Luftwaffe had not yet been trained to attack mass formations of B-17s. By 1940, with U.S. involvement in the European war imminent, American air commanders put their faith in the heavy bombers’ ability to get through to bomb Adolf Hitler’s Germany into submission. This activity by Ian Luff is one of those thought-provoking activities – growing up in the 50s and 60s I knew about Lancaster bombers and the Dambusters but what thoughts I had were about the courage needed to take part in raids. Poorly trained for this kind of work, pilots lacked the navigational aids for this task. But insufficient range prevented the Thunderbolts from keeping the bombers company all the way to the target. Indeed, it can be argued that, at best, defensive measures have kept up with the threat, not surpassed it. In 1940, the U.S. government began funding its own atomic weapons development program, which came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department after the … This feature originally appeared in the November 1998 issue of World War II. Even before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists–many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe–became concerned with nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany. The only way to nullify the effect of the wind was to bomb up or down the wind direction. On the plane profile screen, sometimes I see a value for bombing accuracy with both fighters and bombers. By the time Operation Pointblank ended, it had achieved its primary objective, securing air superiority over the cities, factories and battlefields of Western Europe in preparation for Overlord. In October 1943, the USAAF activated the Fifteenth Air Force, a strategic bomber force flying from Italy that could reach targets in south-central Germany and oil-refining targets in Eastern Europe. Average CEP bombing accuracy at the beginning of the Vietnam War was 420 feet. Between October 8 and 14, 1943, the Eighth Air Force flew 1,342 heavy bomber sorties, losing a total of 152 bombers (11.3 percent), with another 6 percent receiving heavy damage. The rest were dead, wounded, missing, psychological cases or prisoners of war. Desert Storm reconfirmed that LGB's possessed a near single-bomb target-destruction capability, an unprecedented if not revolutionary development in aerial warfare.". Unused / unissued material - Poor shots.Various aerial shots of bombs exploding on ground. French, British, and American gunships destroyed numerous Iraqi mechanized vehicles. They included Thunderbolts, Mustangs and Lightnings, which were joined by British Spitfires and Hawker Tempests. On October 14, 1943, the air war over Europe reached a critical turning point. The offensive came to be called the Blitz after the German word ‘blitzkrieg,’ meaning ‘lightning war.’ Naval search missions … Spaatz abandoned his predecessor’s belief that the heavy bombers would always get through and championed the use of fighter escorts for bombers attacking deep into German territory. The Soviet Union's alarming investment antiship missiles stimulated a tremendous investment in countermeasures. The Eighth Air Force gunners claimed a 6-to-1 kill ratio against enemy fighters over France and the Low Countries, a vastly exaggerated figure. The leverage that this weaponry gave over Balkan aggressors and the recognition of what precision air attack means to decision-makers in the modern world was enunciated by former US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke after the conclusion of the campaign and the settlement of the Dayton Peace Accords: "One of the great things that people should have learned from this is that there are times when air power--not backed up by ground troops--can make a difference.". The activation of the Fifteenth forced the Germans to defend against two major bomber threats during daylight. In Korea, Air Force B-29's dropped the Razon and the much larger and more powerful Tarzon guided bombs on North Korean bridges, destroying at least 19 of them. This was the world’s first 4-engine long range heavy bomber and was developed during the 1930s by Boeing for the United States Army Air Forces. Even though the technology of war is constantly being improved, research and development isn’t always as quick as the military needs. Their replacements would be unskilled youths thrust into combat against experienced American pilots. The most obvious was that the guided bombs could correct for ballistic and release errors in flight. He saw promise in a concept suggested by Word, who drew on earlier research by the Army for laser guidance of missiles. The American daylight bombing campaign against Germany had reached a crisis point. Postwar analysis indicated that Iraq's ability to move supplies from Baghdad to the Kuwaiti theater of operations had dropped from a total potential capacity of 216,000 metric tons per day over six main routes (including a rail line) to only 20,000 metric tons per day over only two routes, about 90 percent reduction in capacity; all others (including the railroad) had essentially been destroyed. With this kind of accuracy, the need to operate mass flights of aircraft against a single aim point at last disappeared; it was as revolutionary a development in military air power terms as, say, the jet engine or aerial refueling. How has American air doctrine changed as a result? As the American strategic campaign entered its second year, it faced an experienced and determined foe in the Luftwaffe. One Woman’s Hair Allegedly Helped Bombing Accuracy in WWII. Over the next year, the Eighth Air Force leadership struggled to build a bomber force capable of inflicting serious damage on the Germans. The US defined the target area as being a 1,000 ft (300 m) radius circle around the target point - for the majority of USAAF attacks only about 20% of the bombs dropped struck in this area. This directive, in effect, ordered the Eighth Air Force to destroy the German aviation industry and secure air superiority over the continent, but how air superiority was to be achieved was debatable. Since then, the development and adoption of guided munitions has greatly increased the accuracy of aerial bombing. The British development of specialist 'Earthquake' bombs (which needed to be dropped very accurately) led to the development of supporting aiming techniques such as SABS and the Pathfinder Force. With the arrival of the first P-51Bs in England in the late fall of 1943 and the rapid development and refitting of wing and belly tanks, American bombers would enjoy escort cover to 600 miles, a range sufficient to reach Berlin. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by Historynet LLC, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. Perhaps most significantly, Doolittle instituted a phased escort system that provided fighter coverage in relays. The steep-dive attack was one of the most accurate ways of bombing. Never did … The Air Corps bomber men believed the American heavy bombers would fly high and fast into enemy territory, eluding interceptors and antiaircraft defenses. Compounding Germany’s troubles, the Americans had begun to introduce new fighters into the European theater in the fall of 1943, which continued throughout the war. In spite of the Allied strategic bombing campaign, the German economy continued to expand until late in the war. Instead, the Luftwaffe exploited the weaknesses of the flying armadas, inflicting heavy losses on the bombers—losses so extreme that, after Black Week, strategic bombing was suspended until the emergence of a new air strategy. Two hundred twenty-nine B-17s reached Schweinfurt and dropped their bombs. When Eaker joined the Eighth Air Force, he had only a handful of B-17s in the European theater. Several different techniques were tried, including Knickebein, X-Gerät and Y-Gerät (Wotan). In short, war, the great waster of human life, is now significantly more humane[citation needed]. It had been won by a combination of fighters actively hunting down and killing Germany’s air force and Allied bombers damaging the industrial and logistical infrastructure that supported the German military machine’s ability to make war. In February 1944 alone, the Luftwaffe lost 33 percent of its single-engine fighters and 20 percent of its fighter pilots, including several fliers who were credited with more than 100 victories. This precision would enable direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Germany had sufficient industrial capacity to absorb the first years of Allied strategic bombing. Initially, the Royal Air Force’s (RAF’s) Bomber Command attempted daylight strikes against the Reich, but those strikes proved disastrous, and the British soon turned to night attacks against urban centers. In an era when things like lasers or computer-assisted anything were still dreams, dropping bombs from aircraft was somewhat … Instead, by simultaneously striking at aircraft factories and bombing industrial and military targets deep inside Germany, the combined bomber offensive forced the Luftwaffe to send its fighters to meet the ever-increasing flow of bombers over the Reich. "Precision bombing" was notably attempted by the United States Army Air Forces over Europe during World War I I, as it was believed that heavy bombers could accurately bomb targets from high altitude using the Norden bombsight. Operation Pointblank had succeeded, but not in the way Allied planners had initially intended or expected. Precision bombing refers to the attempted aerial bombing of a target with some degree of accuracy, with the aim of limiting collateral damage.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. Correct?) McDonnell AH-64A Apache crews of one U.S. Army aviation brigade destroyed approximately fifty Iraqi tanks in a single encounter. Instead, the Luftwaffe had established five defensive zones, each roughly 25 miles deep, providing fighter coverage more than 100 miles inland from the coast. Two premises of daylight strategic bombing—that bombers would be able to get through enemy defenses and back without escorts, and that destroying the enemy’s industrial base would cripple its war effort—appeared to be greatly mistaken. In October 1943, the U.S. Eighth Air Force’s losses became critical, forcing a reappraisal of the American daylight bombing Strategy. The changes produced a revision of Operation Pointblank and a doctrine that emphasized destroying the Luftwaffe in a war of attrition in order to gain air superiority for the coming D-Day invasion in the summer of 1944. By early 1944, the newly formed U.S. Strategic Air Forces was hastening the destruction of the Luftwaffe in the air and on the ground, as well as carrying out the selective destruction of German industrial power. Of the survivors, another 138 bombers suffered damage or casualties. Today, planners are far less concerned about the number of sorties required to destroy a target; rather, they emphasize the number of targets destroyed per sortie as the metric that must be considered. As one analytical study[who?] But building such an armada would take time; planes needed to be assembled, air and ground crews trained, and an air force, the Eighth, had to be positioned in England. The British initiated their own strategic bombing campaign against Germany in late 1939. Dive bombing accuracy is two to three times too high. During the entire month of October, the Eighth lost a total of 214 heavy bombers, almost 10 percent of the total number dispatched. On that Thursday, the United States Eighth Air Force mounted Mission No. 3. Posts: 4019 Joined: 9/12/2004 From: Colorado Status: offline What determines bombing accuracy for an aircraft? The results were again disastrous. Once above the target area, these “self-defending” American bombers would utilize the world’s most sophisticated bombsight—the Norden—which allowed for such factors as speed, course, wind direction and distance to target. Sorties by Spanish, French, and British strike aircraft dropped 86 laser-guided bombs, and French, Italian, Dutch, and United Kingdom attackers dropped 306 "dumb" bombs. Czechoslovakia for instance had 25,000 military deaths but a total of 325,000 killed. Sixty were shot down, just over 20 percent of the total number. This allowed the bombers a better chance of survival, but made it much harder to even find the general area of the target, let alone drop bombs precisely. Without skilled pilots to meet the Allied threat, the rise in German aircraft production meant nothing. The integration of American and British bombing strategies was formalized in January 1943 at the Casablanca Conference in a directive that laid the basis for a “combined bomber offensive” in preparation for the invasion of Europe and the opening of the second front. Imagine it is 30 degrees below zero (-34C) inside your aircraft. Sixteen bomber groups from the 1st and 3rd Air divisions would participate in the strike. Round-the-clock bombing had not smashed the Luftwaffe into oblivion, nor had it destroyed German aircraft production. The remaining precision munitions consisted of specialized air-to-surface missiles such as the Maverick and the Hellfire, as well as cruise missiles, anti-radar missiles, and assorted small numbers of special weapons. Doolittle’s experience as commander of the Northwest African Strategic Air Force during Operation Torch had convinced him of the critical importance of fighter escorts to the success of bombardment. But why did American air leaders initially believe their heavy bombers would always get through, and what were the consequences of the American strategic doctrine when applied in the skies over the Third Reich? Moreover, the new heavy bombers flew above 20,000 feet, too high to be reached by most ground-based antiaircraft. On September 6, Eaker sent 262 bombers against Stuttgart. The B-17s and B-24s were not able to adequately fight their way in and establish local command of the air. Emeritus. Bomber Command was forced to carpet-bomb urban areas, a strategy that razed parts of German cities but did not effectively target Hitler’s industrial complex. The changes eventually made to Operation Pointblank in 1944 came from several sources. Kind of frustrating. As the Gulf War Air Power Survey concluded, "Against point targets, laser-guided bombs offered distinct advantages over "dumb" bombs. If more than half the missions turned out to be unescorted, the chances of surviving an entire tour were slim. American air commanders, like their ground counterparts before them, finally realized the truth of German strategist Carl von Clausewitz’s statement—that victory in war comes, first and foremost, through the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces. Who Started the Bombing of Civilians in WWII? The results of bombing raids were highly successful which gave rise to new ingenuities within aircraft. Precision bombing refers to the attempted aerial bombing of a target with some degree of accuracy, with the aim of maximising target damage or limiting collateral damage. Although Big Week cost the Eighth 300 planes (mostly bombers) lost or written off, nearly 10,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the German aircraft industry and ball bearing plants, a greater tonnage than the Eighth had dropped on all targets in 1943. The message was clear: Bombers could not survive beyond the range of fighter escort. Assuming that population and industrial centers would be vulnerable to fleets of heavy bombers, Douhet advocated attacking an enemy nation’s urban areas and factories with explosives, incendiaries and poisonous gas—with no distinction being made between combatant and noncombatant. The combination of laser-guided bombs from F-111Fs and F-15E Strike Eagles, together with Maverick missiles using imaging infrared thermal sensors fired by A-10 Thunderbolt IIs and F-16s were devastating, as were laser-guided bombs from British Panavia Tornadoes and Blackburn Buccaneers, and AS-30L laser-guided missiles fired from French Air Force SEPECAT Jaguars. ‘If the superior speed of the bomber was such to make interception improbable, or at worst, infrequent, then no provision need be made for escort fighters to accompany the bombers on their long range missions,’ said one modern analyst of the 1930s air doctrine. Bombing was coordinated through a lead aircraft but although still nominally precision bombing (as opposed to the area bombing carried out by RAF Bomber Command) the result of bombing from high level was still spread over an area. Bombing accuracy - 11/12/2016 2:38:10 PM anglonorman. Throughout 1940 and 1941, the RAF continued to build up its small bomber force, and in May 1942, it conducted the first of many “thousand bomber raids” against German military, industrial and civilian targets. A complete set of plans ended up in that country. enter play. On August 17, 1943, the Eighth Air Force launched its deepest raid against the ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt and aircraft production factories at Regensburg. Operations from medium altitudes (15,000 ft and higher) at longer slant ranges severely complicated bombing accuracy, particularly against targets that required a direct hit to be destroyed, such as hangars, bunkers, tanks, and artillery. Chief among this new generation of bomber advocates in the late 1930s was the leader of the Army Air Corps, General Henry “Hap” Arnold. Once the bombers had punched through this fighter belt, he reasoned, there would be clear airspace the rest of the way to and from the targets. By the time of the Gulf War, the capabilities of "smart" aeroplanes dropping unguided bombs from low altitudes were sufficient to place an munition within 30 feet (9.1 m) of a target. According to Arnold and his top commanders, the primary purpose of air power in Europe during the coming conflicts would be strategic bombing. Winning WWII required a coordinated campaign that struck Germany, Italy and Japan on all fronts. In contrast, the average number of "dumb" general-purpose bombs per DMPI destroyed was 6.6. More importantly, the path to a peace agreement had been secured. Using this system, RAF Spitfires were responsible for areas over the English Channel and the North Sea to a distance of about 100 miles. The vast majority were made in the 39 days prior to the ground operation when the coalition's land forces were, for the most part, waiting for their war to begin. John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who negotiated treaties for the United States. The U.S. Strategic Air Forces, coordinating Eighth and Fifteenth air forces’ raids, resulted in a new peak in the American bombing effort. Selective targeting, however, required clear weather - the process of bombing through cloud, relying on radar, was not accurate enough to hit specific targets. In the early days of World War II, bombers were expected to strike by daylight and deliver accurately in order to avoid civilian casualties. American P-47 Thunderbolts then took over, providing escort for the next 150 to 200 miles. These attacks, against Iraq's mechanized formations and artillery, can best be described as a form of strategic attack directed against unengaged but fielded enemy forces, what might be termed DEA: "Degrade Enemy Army." From July 1944 to January 1945, an average of 13,536 people were killed every month. Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940-1945 The Bombing of Germany 1940 - 1945 Allied air-strikes and civil mood in Germany. Allied heavy bombers over the Reich now served as both bait and hunter, compelling the Luftwaffe to climb above 20,000 feet to meet the oncoming bombers and their deadly escorts in order to defend important industrial and population centers. To this day, a legend surrounds the accuracy of the Norden bombsight and the device’s role in the Allied victory in World War II. When the war began on 1 September 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the neutral United States, issued an appeal to the major belligerents to confine their air raids to military targets. It was thought that bringing the horrors of war directly to the factories, power plants and railroads in the cities would cause the citizens of an enemy nation to compel their government to sue for peace. Approximately 2,800 Kamikaze attackers sunk 34 Navy ships, damaged 368 others, killed 4,900 sailors, and wounded over 4,800. At the start of the war, Bomber Command had no real means of determining the success of its operations. Using smart platforms to deliver dumb bombs against point targets smaller than the circular error probable (CEP) may well require redundant targeting.". Explosive loads could also be more accurately tailored for the target, since the planner could assume most bombs would strike in the place and manner expected. Learn how and when to remove this template message, United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/EARS/Hallionpapers/precisionweaponspower.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Precision_bombing&oldid=953232191, Wikipedia articles incorporating text from public domain works of the United States Government, Articles needing additional references from January 2009, All articles needing additional references, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from November 2014, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2012, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2015, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from April 2015, Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the United States Air Force, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 26 April 2020, at 10:09. By 1943, when American bombers began to invade the airspace of the Reich proper, the Luftwaffe fighter command began to make a major effort against them. Building on engineering projects in 1943, the Eighth Air Force mounted wing and belly tanks on its Lockheed P-38 Lightning and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters. It took 108 B-17 bombers, crewed by 1,080 airmen, dropping 648 bombs to guarantee a 96 percent chance of getting just two hits inside a 400 x 500 ft (150 m) German power-generation plant. For example, on February 9, in one night of concentrated air attacks, forty F-111Fs destroyed over 100 armored vehicles. Reinforced with bombers redeployed from North Africa, the Eighth Air Force once again flew unescorted into the heart of industrial Germany. During World War II, the United States undertook massive aerial attacks against cities and industrial areas in the European and Pacific Theaters to destroy German and Japanese military forces. The Iraqi army was, in effect, mortally wounded in this time. The Battle of the Beams was a period early in the Second World War when bombers of the German Air Force used a number of increasingly accurate systems of radio navigation for night bombing in the United Kingdom. What can be identified can be targeted so precisely that unnecessary casualties are not inflicted upon an opponent. The average number of attack sorties per DMPI destroyed was 1.5. Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (Madame Bovary, A Simple Heart). However, on November 17, 1990, the Colorado Aviation Historical Society gave Brown a special achievement award, and Paul Harvey even told her tale on his show, The Rest of the Story , on November 19, 1990. American bomber losses fell below 10 percent of each raiding force, while German pilot losses mounted. Yet even in its limited early operations in 1942, the Eighth Air Force lost up to seven percent of its bombers on some unescorted raids, a rate of loss that previously had led the RAF to abandon daylight operations. The U.S. daytime bombing raids were more effective in reducing German defences by engaging the German Luftwaffe than destruction of the means of aircraft production. The punishing, three-day Allied bombing attack on Dresden from February 13 to 15 in the final months of World War II became among the most controversial Allied actions of … Overall, the small 66-plane F-111F force was credited with 1,500 kills of Iraqi tanks and other mechanized vehicles. Only one plane actually hit the target area, and only with one of its bombs. I unfortunately can't remember where I read it,but many many years ago I read that the RAF had done research into bombing accuracy during WW2 and concluded that only 1 bomb in 16 had fallen within 1 mile of its target. 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