Air warfare was a major component in all theaters of World War II and, together with anti-aircraft warfare, consumed a large fraction of the industrial output of the major powers. Germany and Japan depended on air forces that were closely integrated with land and naval forces; the Axis powers downplayed the advantage of fleets of strategic bombers and were late in appreciating the need to defend against Allied strategic bombing. By contrast, Britain and the United States took an approach that greatly emphasized strategic bombing and (to a lesser degree) tactical control of the battlefield by air as well as adequate air defenses. Both Britain and the U.S. built substantially larger strategic forces of large, long-range bombers. Simultaneously, they built tactical air forces that could win air superiority over the battlefields, thereby giving vital assistance to ground troops. The U.S. Navy and Royal Navy also built a powerful naval-air component based on aircraft carriers, as did the Imperial Japanese Navy; these played the central role in the war at sea.
Pre-war planning
Before 1939, one side (japan)operated under largely theoretical models of air warfare. Italian theorist Giulio Douhet in the 1920s summarised the faith that airmen during and after World War I developed in the efficacy of strategic bombing. Many said it alone could win wars, as "the bomber will always get through". The Americans were confident that the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber could reach targets, protected by its own weapons, and bomb, using the Norden bombsight, with "pickle barrel" accuracy. Japanese aviation pioneers felt that they had developed the finest naval aviators in the world.
Air forces
Germany: Luftwaffe
The Luftwaffe was the aerial warfare branch of the Wehrmacht. Under the leadership of Hermann Göring, it was able to learn and test new combat techniques in the Spanish Civil War. The war also led to greater emphasis on anti-air weapons and fighter aircraft due to their ability to defend against enemy bombers. Its advanced technology and rapid growth led to exaggerated fears in the 1930s that helped to persuade the British and French into appeasement. In the war the Luftwaffe performed well in 1939–41, as its Stuka dive bombers terrified enemy infantry units. But the Luftwaffe was poorly coordinated with overall German strategy, and never ramped up to the size and scope needed in a total war, partly due to a lack of military aircraft production infrastructure for both completed airframes and powerplants when compared to either the Soviet Union or the United States. The Luftwaffe was deficient in radar technology except for their usable UHF and later VHF band airborne intercept radar designs such as the Lichtenstein and Neptun radar systems for their night fighters. The Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter did not enter service until July 1944, and the lightweight Heinkel He 162 appeared only during the last months of the air war in Europe. The Luftwaffe could not deal with Britain's increasingly lethal defensive fighter screen after the Battle of Britain, or the faster P-51 Mustang escort fighters after 1943.
When the Luftwaffe's fuel supply ran dry in 1944 due to the oil campaign of World War II, it was reduced to anti-aircraft flak roles, and many of its men were sent to infantry units. By 1944 it operated 39,000 flak batteries staffed with a million people in uniform, both men and women.
The Luftwaffe lacked the bomber forces for strategic bombing, because it did not think such bombing was worthwhile, especially following the June 3, 1936, death of General Walther Wever, the prime proponent of a strategic bomber force for the Luftwaffe. They did attempt some strategic bombing in the east with the problematic Heinkel He 177A. Their one success was destroying an airbase at Poltava Air Base, Ukraine during the Allied Operation Frantic, which housed 43 new B-17 bombers and a million tons of aviation fuel.
Introduction of turbojet-powered combat aircraft, mostly with the Messerschmitt Me 262 twin-jet fighter, the Heinkel He 162 light jet fighter and the Arado Ar 234 reconnaissance-bomber was pioneered by the Luftwaffe, but the delayed period (1944–45) of their introduction – much of which was due to the lengthy development time for both the BMW 003 and Junkers Jumo 004 jet engine designs—as well as the failure to produce usable examples of their two long-developed higher-power aviation engines, the Junkers Jumo 222 multibank 24-cylinder piston engine of some 2,500 hp, and the advanced Heinkel HeS 011 turbojet of nearly 2,800 lb. of thrust, each of which were meant to power many advanced German airframe design proposals in the last years of the war—meant that they were introduced "too little, too late", as so many other advanced German aircraft designs (and indeed, many other German military weapon systems) had been during the later war years.
Although Germany's allies, especially Italy and Finland, had air forces of their own, there was very little coordination with them. Not until very late in the war did Germany share its aircraft and alternative fuel blueprints and technology with its ally Japan, resulting in the Nakajima Kikka jet fighter and the Mitsubishi Shusui rocket fighter, respectively based on the Me 262A and Me 163B—both of which, similarly, came far too late for Japan to improve its defensive aircraft systems, or to make alternative fuels and lubricants.
Britain: Royal Air Force
The British had their own very well-developed theory of strategic bombing, and built the long-range bombers to implement it.
Once it became clear that Germany was a threat, the RAF started on a large expansion, with many airfields being set up and the number of squadrons increased. From 42 squadrons with 800 aircraft in 1934, the RAF had reached 157 squadrons and 3,700 aircraft by 1939. They combined the newly developed radar with communications centres to direct their fighter defences. Their medium bombers were capable of reaching the German industrial centre of the Ruhr, and larger bombers were under development.
The RAF underwent rapid expansion following the outbreak of war against Germany in 1939. This included the training in other Commonwealth nations (particularly Canada) of half of British and Commonwealth aircrews, some 167,000 men in all. It was the second largest in Europe. The RAF also integrated Polish and other airmen who had escaped from Hitler's Europe. In Europe, the RAF was in operational control of Commonwealth aircrews and Commonwealth squadrons although these retained some degree of independence (such as the formation of No. 6 Group RCAF to put Canadian squadrons together in a nationally identifiable unit).
The RAF had three major combat commands based in the United Kingdom: RAF Fighter Command charged with defence of the UK, RAF Bomber Command (formed 1936) which operated the bombers that would be offensive against the enemy, and RAF Coastal Command which was to protect Allied shipping and attack enemy shipping. The Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm operated land-based fighters in defence of naval establishments and carrier-based aircraft. Later in the war the RAF's fighter force was divided into two Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB) for protecting the UK and the Second Tactical Air Force for ground offensive support in the North West Europe campaign.
Bomber Command participated in two areas of attack – the strategic bombing campaign against German war production, and the less well known mining of coastal waters off Germany (known as Gardening) to contain its naval operations and prevent the U-boats from freely operating against Allied shipping. In order to attack German industry by night the RAF developed navigational aids, tactics to overwhelm the German defences control system, tactics directly against German night-fighter forces, target marking techniques, many electronic aids in defence and attack, and supporting electronic warfare aircraft. The production of heavy aircraft competed with resources for the Army and the Navy, and it was a source of disagreement as to whether the effort could be more profitably expended elsewhere.
Increasingly heavy losses during the latter part of 1943 due to the reorganized Luftwaffe night fighter system (Wilde Sau tactics), and Sir Arthur Harris' costly attempts to destroy Berlin in the winter of 1943/44, led to serious doubts as to whether Bomber Command was being used to its fullest potential. In early 1944 the UK air arm was put under Eisenhower's direct control where it played a vital role in preparing the way for the Overlord Invasion.
Soviet Union: Soviet Air Force
By the end of the war, Soviet annual aircraft production had risen sharply with annual Soviet production peaking at 40,000 aircraft in 1944. Some 157,000 aircraft were produced, of which 126,000 were combat types for the Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily (Военно Воздушные Силы, lit. "Military Aerial Forces") or VVS, while the others were transports, trainers, and other auxiliary aircraft. The critical importance of the ground attack role in defending the Soviet Union from the Axis' Operation Barbarossa through to the final defeat of Nazi Germany with the Battle of Berlin resulted in the Soviet military aviation industry creating more examples of the Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik during the war than any other military aircraft design in aviation history, with just over 36,000 examples produced.
During the war the Soviets employed 7500 bombers to drop 30 million bombs on German targets, with a density that sometimes reached 100–150 tons/ sq kilometer.
United States: Army Air Forces
Before the attack on Pearl Harbor and during the period within which the predecessor U.S. Army Air Corps became the Army Air Forces in late June 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave command of the Navy to an aviator, Admiral Ernest King, with a mandate for an aviation-oriented war in the Pacific. FDR allowed King to build up land-based naval and Marine aviation, and seize control of the long-range bombers used in antisubmarine patrols in the Atlantic. Roosevelt basically agreed with Robert A. Lovett, the civilian Assistant Secretary of War for Air, who argued, "While I don't go so far as to claim that air power alone will win the war, I do claim the war will not be won without it."
Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall rejected calls for complete independence for the Air Corps, because the land forces generals and the Navy were vehemently opposed. In the compromise that was reached it was understood that after the war, the aviators would get their independence. Meanwhile, the Air Corps became the Army Air Forces (AAF) in June, 1941, combining all their personnel and units under a single commanding general, an airman. In 1942 the Army reorganized into three equal components, one of which was the AAF, which then had almost complete freedom in terms of internal administration. Thus the AAF set up its own medical service independent of the Surgeon General, its own WAC units, and its own logistics system. It had full control over the design and procurement of airplanes and related electronic gear and ordnance. Its purchasing agents controlled 15% of the nation's Gross National Product. Together with naval aviation, it recruited the best young men in the nation. General Henry H. Arnold headed the AAF. One of the first military men to fly, and the youngest colonel in World War I, he selected for the most important combat commands men who were ten years younger than their Army counterparts, including Ira Eaker (b. 1896), Jimmy Doolittle (b. 1896), Hoyt Vandenberg (b. 1899), Elwood "Pete" Queseda (b. 1904), and, youngest of them all, Curtis LeMay (b. 1906). Although a West Pointer himself, Arnold did not automatically turn to Academy men for top positions. Since he operated independent of theatre commanders, Arnold could and did move his generals around, and speedily removed underachievers.
Aware of the need for engineering expertise, Arnold went outside the military and formed close liaisons with top engineers like rocket specialist Theodore von Karmen at Caltech. Arnold was given seats on the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US-British Combined Chiefs of Staff. Arnold, however, was officially Deputy Chief of [Army] Staff, so on committees he deferred to his boss, General Marshall. Thus Marshall made all the basic strategic decisions, which were worked out by his "War Plans Division" (WPD, later renamed the Operations Division). WPD's section leaders were infantrymen or engineers, with a handful of aviators in token positions.
The AAF had a newly created planning division, whose advice was largely ignored by WPD. Airmen were also underrepresented in the planning divisions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Combined Chiefs. Aviators were largely shut out of the decision-making and planning process because they lacked seniority in a highly rank-conscious system. The freeze intensified demands for independence, and fueled a spirit of "proving" the superiority of air power doctrine. Because of the young, pragmatic leadership at the top, and the universal glamor accorded aviators, morale in the AAF was strikingly higher than anywhere else (except perhaps Navy aviation).
The AAF provided extensive technical training, promoted officers and enlisted faster, provided comfortable barracks and good food, and was safe, with an American government-sponsored pilot training program in place as far back as 1938, that did work in concert when necessary with the British Commonwealth's similar program within North America. The only dangerous jobs were voluntary ones as crew of fighters and bombers—or involuntary ones at jungle bases in the Southwest Pacific. Marshall, an infantryman uninterested in aviation before 1939, became a partial convert to air power and allowed the aviators more autonomy. He authorized vast spending on planes, and insisted that American forces had to have air supremacy before taking the offensive. However, he repeatedly overruled Arnold by agreeing with Roosevelt's requests in 1941–42 to send half of the new light bombers and fighters to the British and Soviets, thereby delaying the buildup of American air power.
The Army's major theatre commands were given to infantrymen Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Neither had paid much attention to aviation before the war. However the air power advocate Jimmy Doolittle succeeded Eaker as 8th Air Force commander at the start of 1944. Doolittle instituted a critical change in strategic fighter tactics, and the 8th Air Force bomber raids faced less and less Luftwaffe defensive fighter opposition for the rest of the war.
Offensive counter-air, to clear the way for strategic bombers and an eventually decisive cross-channel invasion, was a strategic mission led by escort fighters partnered with heavy bombers. The tactical mission, however, was the province of fighter-bombers, assisted by light and medium bombers.
American theatre commanders became air power enthusiasts and built their strategies around the need for tactical air supremacy. MacArthur had been badly defeated in the Philippines in 1941–42 primarily because the Japanese controlled the sky. His planes were outnumbered and outclassed, his airfields shot up, his radar destroyed, and his supply lines cut. His infantry never had a chance. MacArthur vowed never again. His island-hopping campaign was based on the strategy of isolating Japanese strongholds while leaping past them. Each leap was determined by the range of his 5th Air Force, and the first task on securing an objective was to build an airfield to prepare for the next leap. Eisenhower's deputy at SHAEF was Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, who had been commander of the Allied Mediterranean Air Command when Eisenhower was in charge of Allied operations in the Mediterranean.
Doctrine and technology
The Allies won battlefield air supremacy in the Pacific in 1943, and in Europe in 1944. That meant that Allied supplies and reinforcements would get through to the battlefront, but not the enemy's. It meant the Allies could concentrate their strike forces wherever they pleased, and overwhelm the enemy with a preponderance of firepower. There was a specific campaign, within the overall strategic offensive, for suppression of enemy air defences, or, specifically, Luftwaffe fighters.
Aircrew training
While the Japanese began the war with a superb set of naval aviators, trained at the Misty Lagoon experimental air station, their practice, perhaps from the warrior tradition, was to keep the pilots in action until they died. The U.S. position, at least for naval aviation, was a strict rotation between sea deployments and shore duty, the latter including training replacements, personal training, and participating in doctrinal development. The U.S. strategic bombing campaign against Europe did this in principle, but relatively few crews survived the 25 missions of a rotation. On December 27, 1938, the United States had initiated the Civilian Pilot Training Program to vastly increase the number of ostensibly "civilian" American pilots, but this program also had the eventual effect of providing a large flight-ready force of trained pilots for future military action if the need arose.
Other countries had other variants. In some countries, it seemed to be a matter of personal choice if one stayed in combat or helped build the next generation. Even where there was a policy of using skills outside combat, some individuals, e.g. Guy Gibson VC insisted on returning to combat after a year. Both Gibson's successors at 617 Squadron were ordered off "ops" permanently – Leonard Cheshire VC after 102 operations, "Willie" Tait (DSO & 3 Bars) after 101 – reflecting the strain of prolonged operations.
The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (and related schemes) as well as training British crew in North America, away from the war, contributed large numbers of aircrew from outside the UK to the forces under RAF operational control. The resulting "Article XV squadrons" nominally part of individual Commonwealth air forces were filled from a pool of mixed nationalities. While RAF Bomber Command let individuals form teams naturally and bomber aircrew were generally heterogeneous in origins, the Canadian government pushed for its bomber aircrew to be organised in one Group for greater recognition – No. 6 Group RCAF.
Logistics
Airfield construction
Arnold correctly anticipated that the U.S. would have to build forward airfields in inhospitable places. Working closely with the Army Corps of Engineers, he created Aviation Engineer Battalions that by 1945 included 118,000 men. Runways, hangars, radar stations, power generators, barracks, gasoline storage tanks, and ordnance dumps had to be built hurriedly on tiny coral islands, mud flats, featureless deserts, dense jungles, or exposed locations still under enemy artillery fire. The heavy construction gear had to be imported, along with the engineers, blueprints, steel-mesh landing mats, prefabricated hangars, aviation fuel, bombs and ammunition, and all necessary supplies. As soon as one project was finished the battalion would load up its gear and move forward to the next challenge, while headquarters inked in a new airfield on the maps.
The engineers opened an entirely new airfield in North Africa every other day for seven straight months. Once when heavy rains along the coast reduced the capacity of old airfields, two companies of Airborne Engineers loaded miniaturized gear into 56 transports, flew a thousand miles to a dry Sahara location, started blasting away, and were ready for the first B-17 24 hours later. Often engineers had to repair and use a captured enemy airfield. The German fields were well-built all-weather operations.
Some of the Japanese island bases, built before the war, had excellent airfields. Most new Japanese installations in the Pacific were ramshackle affairs with poor siting, poor drainage, scant protection, and narrow, bumpy runways. Engineering was a low priority for the offense-minded Japanese, who chronically lacked adequate equipment and imagination. On a few islands, local commanders did improve aircraft shelters and general survivability, as they correctly perceived the danger of coming raids or invasions. In the same theatre the United States Navy's own "construction battalions", collectively named the "Seabees" from the CB acronym adopted on the date of their formation in March 1942, would build over a hundred military airstrips and a significant degree of the military support infrastructure supplying the Pacific "island-hopping" campaign of the Allies during the Pacific war through 1945, as well as elsewhere in the world during the war years.
Tactical
Tactical air power involves gaining control of the airspace over the battlefield, directly supporting ground units (as by attacks on enemy tanks and artillery), and attacking enemy supply lines and airfields. Typically, fighter planes are used to gain air supremacy, and light bombers are used for support missions.
Air supremacy
Tactical air doctrine stated that the primary mission was to turn tactical superiority into complete air supremacy—to totally defeat the enemy air force and obtain control of its air space. This could be done directly through dogfights and raids on airfields and radar stations or indirectly by destroying aircraft factories and fuel supplies. Anti-aircraft artillery (called "ack-ack" by the British, "flak" by the Germans, and "Archie" by the World War I USAAS) could also play a role, but it was downgraded by most airmen. The Allies won air supremacy in the Pacific in 1943 and in Europe in 1944. That meant that Allied supplies and reinforcements would get through to the battlefront, but not the enemy's. It meant the Allies could concentrate their strike forces wherever they pleased and overwhelm the enemy with a preponderance of firepower. This was the basic Allied strategy, and it worked.
One of the most effective demonstrations of air supremacy by the Western Allies over Europe occurred in early 1944, when Lieutenant General Jimmy Doolittle, who took command of the US 8th Air Force in January 1944, only a few months later "released" the building force of P-51 Mustangs from their intended mission to closely escort the 8th Air Force's heavy bombers, after getting help from British aviators in selecting the best available aircraft types for the task. The USAAF's Mustang squadrons were then tasked to fly well ahead of the bombers' combat box defensive formations by some 75–100 miles (120–160 km) to basically clear the skies, in the manner of a sizable "fighter sweep" air supremacy mission, of any defensive presence over the Third Reich of the Luftwaffe's Jagdgeschwader single-seat fighter wings. This important change of strategy also coincidentally doomed both the twin-engined Zerstörer heavy fighters and their replacement, heavily armed Focke-Wulf Fw 190A Sturmbock forces used as bomber destroyers, each in their turn. This change in American fighter tactics began to have its most immediate effect with the loss of more and more of the Luftwaffe's Jagdflieger fighter pilot personnel and fewer bomber losses to the Luftwaffe as 1944 wore on.
Air superiority depended on having the fastest, most maneuverable fighters, in sufficient quantity, based on well-supplied airfields, within range. The RAF demonstrated the importance of speed and maneuverability in the Battle of Britain (1940), when its fast Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane fighters easily riddled the clumsy Stukas as they were pulling out of dives. The race to build the fastest fighter became one of the central themes of World War II.
Once total air supremacy in a theatre was gained, the second mission was interdiction of the flow of enemy supplies and reinforcements in a zone five to fifty miles behind the front. Whatever moved had to be exposed to air strikes, or else confined to moonless nights. (Radar was not good enough for nighttime tactical operations against ground targets.) A large fraction of tactical air power focused on this mission.
Close air support
The third and lowest priority (from the AAF viewpoint) mission was "close air support" or direct assistance to ground units on the battlefront, which consisted of bombing targets identified by ground forces, and strafing exposed infantry. Airmen disliked the mission because it subordinated the air war to the ground war; furthermore, slit trenches, camouflage, and flak guns usually reduced the effectiveness of close air support. "Operation Cobra" in July, 1944, targeted a critical strip of 3,000 acres (1,214 ha) of German strength that held up the US breakthrough out of Normandy. General Omar Bradley, his ground forces stymied, placed his bets on air power. 1,500 heavies, 380 medium bombers and 550 fighter bombers dropped 4,000 tons of high explosives. Bradley was horrified when 77 planes dropped their payloads short of the intended target:
- "The ground belched, shook and spewed dirt to the sky. Scores of our troops were hit, their bodies flung from slit trenches. Doughboys were dazed and frightened ... A bomb landed squarely on McNair in a slit trench and threw his body sixty feet and mangled it beyond recognition except for the three stars on his collar."
The Germans were stunned senseless, with tanks overturned, telephone wires severed, commanders missing, and a third of their combat troops killed or wounded. The defence line broke; J. Lawton Collins rushed his VII Corps forward; the Germans retreated in a rout; the Battle of France was won; air power seemed invincible. However, the sight of a senior colleague killed by error was unnerving, and after the completion of operation Cobra, Army generals were so reluctant to risk "friendly fire" casualties that they often passed over excellent attack opportunities that would be possible only with air support. Infantrymen, on the other hand, were ecstatic about the effectiveness of close air support:
- "Air strikes on the way; we watch from a top window as P-47s dip in and out of clouds through suddenly erupting strings of Christmas-tree lights [flak], before one speck turns over and drops toward earth in the damnest sight of the Second World War, the dive-bomber attack, the speck snarling, screaming, dropping faster than a stone until it's clearly doomed to smash into the earth, then, past the limits of belief, an impossible flattening beyond houses and trees, an upward arch that makes the eyes hurt, and, as the speck hurtles away, WHOOM, the earth erupts five hundred feet up in swirling black smoke. More specks snarl, dive, scream, two squadrons, eight of them, leaving congealing, combining, whirling pillars of black smoke, lifting trees, houses, vehicles, and, we devoutly hope, bits of Germans. We yell and pound each other's backs. Gods from the clouds; this is how you do it! You don't attack painfully across frozen plains, you simply drop in on the enemy and blow them out of existence."
Some forces, especially the United States Marine Corps, emphasized the air-ground team. The airmen, in this approach, also are infantrymen who understand the needs and perspective of the ground forces. There was much more joint air-ground training, and a given air unit might have a long-term relationship with a given ground unit, improving their mutual communications.
In North-West Europe, the Allies used the "taxi-rank" (or "Cab-rank") system for supporting the ground assault. Fighter-bombers, such as the Hawker Typhoon or P-47 Thunderbolt, armed with cannon, bombs and rockets would be in the air at 10,000 ft over the battlefield. When support was required it could be quickly summoned by a ground observer. While often too inaccurate against armoured vehicles, rockets had a psychological effect on troops and were effective against the supply-carrying trucks used to support German tanks.
Pioneering use of precision-guided munitions
Both the Luftwaffe and USAAF pioneered the use of what would come to be known as precision-guided munitions during World War II. The Luftwaffe was the first to use such weapons with the Fritz X armor-piercing anti-ship glide bomb on September 9, 1943, against the Italian battleship Roma. III.Gruppe/KG 100's Dornier Do 217 medium bombers achieved two hits, exploding her powder magazines and sinking her. Both the Fritz X and the unarmored, rocket-boosted Henschel Hs 293 guided glide bomb were used successfully against Allied shipping during the Allied invasion of Italy following Italy's capitulation to the Allies earlier in September 1943. Both weapons used the Kehl-Strasbourg radio control link: a joystick-equipped Funkgerät FuG 203 Kehl transmitter in a deploying aircraft, with the corresponding FuG 230 Straßburg receiver in the ordnance for guidance.
The United States Army Air Forces had come up with the Azon guided bomb, converted from a regular 453 kg (1,000 lb.) high explosive bomb with a special set of radio controlled vertical tailfins controlling the lateral path to the target. Missions were flown in both Western Europe in the summer and autumn of 1944, and in the China-Burma-India theatre in early 1945, with two separate B-24 Liberator squadrons, one in each theatre, having some limited success with the device. The U.S. Navy's "Bat" unpowered anti-ship ordnance was based around the same half-ton HE bomb as the Azon, but with the same bomb contained within a much more aerodynamic airframe, and used a fully autonomous onboard radar guidance system to control its flightpath, rather than an external source of control for the Azon.
German bombers and missiles
Britain and the United States built large quantities of four-engined long-range heavy bombers; Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union did not. The decision was made in 1933 by the German general staff, the technical staff, and the aviation industry that there was a lack of sufficient labor, capital, and raw materials. A top-level Luftwaffe general, Walther Wever, had tried to make some form of strategic bombing capability a priority for the newly formed Luftwaffe through 1935 and into 1936, but his untimely death in June 1936 ended any hopes of developing such a force of long-range "heavies" possible, as his Ural bomber program for such four-engined aircraft, comparable to what the United States was already pioneering, literally died with him. During the war Hitler was insistent on bombers having tactical capability, which at the time meant dive bombing, a maneuver then impossible for any heavy bomber. His aircraft had limited effect on Britain for a variety of reasons, but low payload was among them. Lacking a doctrine of strategic bombing, neither the RLM or the Luftwaffe ever ordered any suitable quantities of an appropriate heavy bomber from the German aviation industry, having only the Heinkel He 177A Greif available for such duties, a design plagued with many technical problems, including an unending series of engine fires, with just under 1,200 examples ever being built. Early in the war, the Luftwaffe had excellent tactical aviation, but when it faced Britain's integrated air defence system, the medium bombers actually designed, produced, and deployed to combat – meant to include the Schnellbomber high-speed mediums, and their intended heavier warload successors, the Bomber B design competition competitors—did not have the numbers or bomb load to do major damage of the sort the RAF and USAAF inflicted on German cities.
Failure of German secret weapons
Hitler believed that new high-technology "secret weapons" would give Germany a strategic bombing capability and turn the war around. The first of 9,300 V-1 flying bombs hit London in mid-June 1944, and together with 1,300 V-2 rockets, caused 8,000 civilian deaths and 23,000 injuries. Although they did not seriously undercut British morale or munitions production, they bothered the British government a great deal—Germany now had its own unanswered weapons system. Using proximity fuzes, British anti-aircraft artillery gunners learned how to shoot down the 400 mph V-1s; nothing could stop the supersonic V-2s. The British government, in near panic, demanded that upwards of 40% of bomber sorties be targeted against the launch sites, and got its way in "Operation Crossbow". The attacks were futile, and the diversion represented a major success for Hitler.
Every raid against a V-1 or V-2 launch site was one less raid against the Third Reich. On the whole, however, the secret weapons were still another case of too little too late. The Luftwaffe ran the V-1 program, which used a jet engine, but it diverted scarce engineering talent and manufacturing capacity that were urgently needed to improve German radar, air defence, and jet fighters. The German Army ran the V-2 program. The rockets were a technological triumph, and bothered the British leadership even more than the V-1s. But they were so inaccurate they rarely could hit militarily significant targets.
Second Sino-Japanese War
China, 1937–1944
The airwar over China were the largest air battles fought since the Great War, involving the first prolonged and massed-deployments of aircraft carriers in support of expeditionary forces, extensive close-air support and air-interdiction strikes, significant use of airpower in the attacks against naval assets, and much of the technological and operational transitioning from the latest biplane fighter designs to the modern monoplane fighter designs. Although largely a forgotten war by Western standards, the significance and impact of the airwar between China and the Empire of Japan cannot be denied; it was the best opportunity for the Western air powers to learn about the might of Japanese aerial and naval military technological prowess, as the West were yet in for a dangerous realization of Japanese air prowess by the end of 1941, when the Empire of Japan expanded into the Pacific.
As the War of Resistance-World War II broke out with the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, the centralized command of the Republic of China Air Force had integrated various former-warlord air force men and machines, as well as overseas-Chinese volunteer aviators into the nominally Nationalist Air Force of China, and coordinating with the Second United Front of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) and People's Liberation Army (PLA), engaging in massive air-battles, close-air support operations, air-interdiction strikes, facing indiscriminate terror-bombing campaigns against all manners of civilian targets inflicted by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service. The Chinese Air Force equipped with a maximum of only about 300 imported operational combat aircraft at any given time, was stretched thin over a massive area of the northern, eastern, and southern fronts against approximately 1,000 operational combat aircraft of the Imperial Japanese forces supported by their own robust and rapidly developing aviation industry.
Major air battles and skirmishes between the Chinese Air Force and the Japanese Army and Navy air forces continued over a vast range of the Chinese mainland, and beyond, even after the Battle of Shanghai, Battle of Nanking and Battle of Taiyuan were lost by the end of 1937, new frontlines were quickly being drawn at the Battle of Taierzhuang, the Battle of Wuhan, the Battle of Canton, the Battle of South Guangxi/Kunlun Pass, among very many other engagements through 1938 and into 1939.
The Chinese Air Force was initially equipped with a mixed-bag of fighter and bomber aircraft at the beginning of the war in 1937 that included the Boeing Model 281 (Peashooter), Curtiss A-12 Shrikes, Curtiss Hawk IIs/Hawk IIIs, Fiat CR.32s, Heinkel He 111s, Martin B-10s, Northrop Gammas, etc., and while giving good account in their many missions against the Imperial Japanese onslaught, these were mostly lost through continued attrition as the war raged on through the end of 1937. The Chinese Air Force however would continue to fight on for years to come as they were replenished through the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1937, and transitioning almost entirely into Soviet-made Polikarpov I-15, I-153 and I-16 fighters as well as Tupolev SB-2 and TB-3 bombers by 1938. Fighting capacity was greatly bolstered with support from the aviators of the Soviet Volunteer Group, which was active from late 1937 until the end of 1939, and remained stationed in China at limited capacity until December 1940. The Chinese would remain with these increasingly obsolescent aircraft as the Japanese made tremendous advancements in aircraft and engine technologies.
Air war stalemate at the national fortress of Chongqing
With the fall of Wuhan/Hubei province to the Japanese, the wartime capital of China had been pushed back to Chongqing, where an all-air war campaign against targets in Sichuan province between the CAF and the IJAAF/IJNAF would rage for years in a cat and mouse game under the codenames "Operation 100", "101" and "102" IJA/IJN "joint-strike force" terror-bombing campaigns. Despite the general obsolescence of the Chinese fighter aircraft against the new Japanese Schnellbombers, the CAF improvised, continuing to inflict casualties and losses against the Japanese raiders, culminating with the well-timed deployment of experimental air-burst bombs launched against the massive heavy bomber formations in August 1940, and climaxing with the introduction of the most advanced fighter aircraft of the time: the Mitsubishi A6M "Zero", which gained almost complete air-supremacy with its unheard-of performance against the Chinese Air Force the following month, and would incredibly remain largely unheard-of almost a year and a half later when the allied air powers faced the scourge of the Zero fighter as the Imperial Japanese war machine expanded into the Pacific with the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1940–41, well before Pearl Harbor, the United States decided on an aggressive air campaign against Japan using Chinese bases and American pilots wearing Chinese uniforms. The United States created, funded, and provided crews and equipment for an American Volunteer Group of combat aviators, commonly referred to as the "Flying Tigers", a nominally Chinese Air Force unit composed almost entirely of Americans, led by General Claire Lee Chennault. Tasked with the defense of "The Hump" supply-lifeline between the British bases in Burma (Myanmar) and India, and the wartime port-of-entry into China, Kunming city, the Flying Tigers employed dissimilar hit-and-run air-tactics using the heavy-firepower and high-speed diving of the well-armored P-40 Warhawk fighter-attack planes, racking up a strong record against the Japanese Army Air Force operating in the CBI theater of operations beginning in December 1941. Chennault called for strategic bombing against Japanese cities, using American bombers based in China. The plan was approved by Roosevelt and top policy makers in Washington, and equipment was on the way in December 1941. It proved to be futile. American strategic bombing of Japan from Chinese bases began in 1944, including the firebombing of Wuhan, using Boeing B-29 Superfortress under the command of General Curtis Lemay, but the distances and the logistics made an effective campaign impossible.
Pacific air war
Japan did not have a separate air force. Its aviation units were integrated into the Army and Navy, which were not well coordinated with each other. Japanese military aircraft production during World War II produced 76,000 warplanes, of which 30,000 were fighters and 15,000 were light bombers.
Japanese air war 1941–42
Washington tried to deter Japanese entry into the war by threatening the firebombing of Japanese cities using B-17 strategic bombers based in the Philippines. The US sent too little too late, as the Japanese easily overwhelmed the American "Far Eastern Air Force" the day after Pearl Harbor.
Japanese naval air power proved unexpectedly powerful, sinking the American battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, then raging widely across the Pacific and Indian oceans to defeat elements of the British, American, Dutch, and Australian forces. Land-based airpower, coordinated efficiently with land forces, enabled Japan to overrun Malaya, Singapore, and the Philippines by spring 1942.
The Doolittle Raid used 16 B-25 bombers (taking off from aircraft carriers) to bomb Tokyo in April 1942. Little physical damage was done, but the episode shocked and stunned the Japanese people and leadership.
1942
At the Battle of the Java Sea, February 27, 1942, the Japanese Navy destroyed the main ABDA (American, British, Dutch, and Australian) naval force. The Netherlands East Indies campaign resulted in the surrender of Allied forces on Java. Meanwhile, Japanese aircraft had all but eliminated Allied air power in South-East Asia and began attacking Australia, with a major raid on Darwin, February 19. A raid by a powerful Japanese Navy aircraft carrier force into the Indian Ocean resulted in the Battle of Ceylon and sinking of a British carrier, HMS Hermes, as well as two cruisers and other ships, effectively driving the British fleet out of the Indian Ocean and paving the way for Japanese conquest of Burma and a drive towards India.
The Japanese seemed unstoppable. However, the Doolittle Raid caused an uproar in the Japanese Army and Navy commands—they had both lost face in letting the Emperor be threatened. As a consequence, the Army relocated overseas fighter groups to Japan, groups needed elsewhere. Even more significantly, the Naval command believed it had to extend its eastern defence perimeter, and they focused on Midway as the next base.
Coral Sea and Midway
By mid-1942, the Japanese Combined Fleet found itself holding a vast area, even though it lacked the aircraft carriers, aircraft, and aircrew to defend it, and the freighters, tankers, and destroyers necessary to sustain it. Moreover, Fleet doctrine was incompetent to execute the proposed "barrier" defense. Instead, they decided on additional attacks in both the south and central Pacific. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, fought between May 4–8, 1942 off the coast of Australia, the opposing fleets never saw one another; it was an air exchange. While the Americans had greater losses and arguably a tactical loss (having lost a fleet carrier while sinking a Japanese light carrier), they gained a strategic victory, as Japan cancelled a planned offensive. Most critically, the damage to one of the Japanese fleet carriers and the other carrier's airgroup would leave both carriers out of the Battle of Midway, preventing them from them bringing their 144 aircraft (at full strength) to supplement the Japanese carrier force. This would allow the American forces to be at near-parity temporarily, setting the stage for the turning point of the Pacific War.
In the Battle of Midway, the Japanese split a portion of their fleet toward the Aleutians in a simultaneous operation, as well as separating the majority of its surface force from the Japanese carriers. The Americans, on the other hand, had received critical details of the Midway operation due to a cryptographic breakthrough, which included dates and a complete order of battle. As such, American forces were able to ambush the Japanese carriers. On the other hand, the Japanese expected American carriers to sail from Pearl Harbor after Midway had been attacked; the unexpected presence of American carriers would lead to the early tactical mistakes the Japanese commander would make. Japan had 272 warplanes operating from four carriers; the U.S. Navy carriers had 233 aircraft, but there were also another 115 AAF and Marine land-based aircraft on Midway itself. Due to tactical errors by the Japanese commander and the lucky breaks in executing the decisive American attack (in addition to the skill of the American aviators and commanders), the Japanese lost three of their four carriers early in the battle. The decisive attack was two simultaneous (unplanned) dive bomber attacks arriving after approximately ninety minutes of constant harassment from various American land and naval air squadrons. This harassment had left the Japanese combat air patrol out of position, especially as the combat air patrol was focused on an on-going torpedo bomber attack. The harassment had also prevented the Japanese carriers from launching a strike on the American carriers, and the three Japanese carriers were sunk having only made one, ineffective attack against Midway itself. The final fourth carrier would be sunk by the end of the day. The fourth carrier, however, managed to cripple one American carrier, which would later be sunk by a submarine. Having lost all their carriers, the Japanese were forced to retreat, unable to use the rest of their surface fleet (including the battleships) without air cover. Having lost all but two of their fleet carriers (the ones damaged at Coral Sea), the Japanese never again launched a major, effective offensive in the Pacific. The successes of the Japanese naval air arm, having won stunning victories for the Japanese navy in the first-half of 1942, came to a sharp stop after the Battle of Midway.
Guadalcanal
The Japanese had built a major air base on the island of Rabaul, but had difficulty keeping it supplied. American naval and Marine aviation made Rabaul a frequent bombing target.
A Japanese airfield was spotted under construction at Guadalcanal. The Americans made an amphibious landing in August 1942 to seize it, sent in the Cactus Air Force, and started to reverse the tide of Japanese conquests. As a result, Japanese and Allied forces both occupied various parts of Guadalcanal. Over the following six months, both sides fed resources into an escalating battle of attrition on the island, at sea, and in the sky, with eventual victory going to the Americans in February 1943. It was a campaign the Japanese could ill afford. A majority of Japanese aircraft from the entire South Pacific area was drained into the Japanese defence of Guadalcanal. Japanese logistics, as happened time and again, failed; only 20% of the supplies dispatched from Rabaul to Guadalcanal ever reached there.
1943–1945
After 1942, the United States made a massive effort to build up its aviation forces in the Pacific, and began island-hopping to push its airfields closer and closer to Tokyo. Meanwhile, the Japanese were unable to upgrade their aircraft, and they fell further and further behind in numbers of aircraft carriers. The forward island bases were very hard to supply—often only submarines could get through—and the Japanese forces worked without replacements or rest, and often with inadequate food and medicine. Their morale and performance steadily declined. Starvation became an issue in many bases.
The American airmen were well-fed and well-supplied, but they were not rotated and faced increasingly severe stress that caused their performance to deteriorate. They flew far more often in the Southwest Pacific than in Europe, and although rest time in Australia was scheduled, there was no fixed number of missions that would produce transfer back to the States. Coupled with the monotonous, hot, disease-ridden environment, the result was bad morale that jaded veterans quickly passed along to newcomers. After a few months, epidemics of combat fatigue would drastically reduce the efficiency of units. The men who had been at jungle airfields longest, the flight surgeons reported, were in the worst shape:
- Many have chronic dysentery or other disease, and almost all show chronic fatigue states ... They appear listless, unkempt, careless, and apathetic with almost masklike facial expression. Speech is slow, thought content is poor, they complain of chronic headaches, insomnia, memory defect, feel forgotten, worry about themselves, are afraid of new assignments, have no sense of responsibility, and are hopeless about the future.
Strategic bombing of Japan
The flammability of Japan's large cities, and the concentration of munitions production there, made strategic bombing the preferred strategy of the Americans. The first efforts were made from bases in China. Massive efforts (costing $4.5 billion) to establish B-29 bases there had failed when in 1944 the Japanese Army simply moved overland and captured them. The Marianas (especially the islands of Saipan and Tinian), captured in June 1944, gave a close, secure base for the very-long-range B-29. The "Superfortress" (the B-29) represented the highest achievement of traditional (pre-jet) aeronautics. Its four 2,200 horsepower Wright R-3350 supercharged engines could lift four tons of bombs 3,500 miles at 33,000 feet (high above Japanese flak or fighters). Computerized fire-control mechanisms made its 13 guns exceptionally lethal against fighters. However, the systematic raids that began in June 1944, were unsatisfactory, because the AAF had learned too much in Europe; it overemphasised self-defence. Arnold, in personal charge of the campaign (bypassing the theatre commanders) brought in a new leader, General Curtis LeMay. In early 1945, LeMay ordered a radical change in tactics: remove the machine guns and gunners, fly in low at night. (Much fuel was used to get to 30,000 feet; it could now be replaced with more bombs.) The Japanese radar, fighter, and anti-aircraft systems were so ineffective that they could not hit the bombers. Fires raged through the cities, and millions of civilians fled to the mountains.
Tokyo was hit repeatedly and first suffered a serious blow with the Operation Meetinghouse raid on the night of March 9/10 1945, a conflagration that destroyed nearly 270,000 buildings over a 16 square mile (41 km2) area, killing at least 83,000, and estimated by some to be the single most destructive bombing raid in military history. On June 5, 51,000 buildings in four miles of Kobe were burned out by 473 B-29s; Japanese opposition was fierce, as 11 B-29s went down and 176 were damaged. Osaka, where one-sixth of the Empire's munitions were made, was hit by 1,733 tons of incendiaries dropped by 247 B-29s. A firestorm burned out 8.1 square miles, including 135,000 houses; 4,000 died. The Japanese local officials reported:
- Although damage to big factories was slight, approximately one-fourth of some 4,000 lesser factories, which operated hand-in-hand with the big factories, were completely destroyed by fire ... Moreover, owing to the rising fear of air attacks, workers in general were reluctant to work in the factories, and the attendance fluctuated as much as 50 percent.
The Japanese army, which was not based in the cities, was largely undamaged by the raids. The Army was short of food and gasoline, but, as Iwo Jima and Okinawa proved, it was capable of ferocious resistance. The Japanese also had a new tactic that it hoped would provide the bargaining power to get a satisfactory peace, the Kamikaze.
Kamikaze
In late 1944, the Japanese invented an unexpected and highly effective new tactic, the Kamikaze suicide plane aimed like a guided missile at American ships. Kamikaze means 'divine wind', a reference to the hurricane that sunk an invading Mongol force in 1274. The attacks began in October 1944 and continued to the end of the war. Most of the aircraft used in kamikaze attacks were converted obsolete fighters and dive-bombers. The quality of construction was very poor, and many crashed during training or before reaching targets. Experienced pilots were used to lead a mission because they could navigate; they were not Kamikazes, and they returned to base for another mission. The Kamikaze pilots were inexperienced and had minimal training; however most were well-educated and intensely committed to the Emperor.
Kamikaze attacks were highly effective at the Battle of Okinawa in Spring 1945. During the three-month battle, 4,000 kamikaze sorties sank 38 US ships and damaged 368 more, killing 4,900 sailors in the American 5th Fleet. Destroyers and destroyer escorts, doing radar picket duty, were hit hard, as the inexperienced pilots dived at the first American ship they spotted instead of waiting to get at the big carriers. Task Force 58 analyzed the Japanese technique at Okinawa in April, 1945:
- "Rarely have the enemy attacks been so cleverly executed and made with such reckless determination. These attacks were generally by single or few aircraft making their approaches with radical changes in course and altitude, dispersing when intercepted and using cloud cover to every advantage. They tailed our friendlies home, used decoy planes, and came in at any altitude or on the water."
The Americans decided their best defense against Kamikazes was to knock them out on the ground, or else in the air long before they approached the fleet. The Navy called for more fighters and more warning. The carriers replaced a fourth of their light bombers with Marine fighters; back home the training of fighter pilots was stepped up. More combat air patrols circling the big ships, more radar picket ships (which themselves became prime targets), and more attacks on airbases and gasoline supplies eventually worked. Japan suspended Kamikaze attacks in May 1945, because it was now hoarding gasoline and hiding planes in preparation for new suicide attacks in case the Allied forces tried to invade their home islands.[citation needed]
The Kamikaze strategy allowed the use of untrained pilots and obsolete planes, and since evasive maneuvering was dropped and there was no return trip, the scarce gasoline reserves could be stretched further. Since pilots guided their airplane like a guided missile all the way to the target, the proportion of hits was much higher than in ordinary bombing, and would eventually see the introduction of a purpose-built, air-launched rocket-powered suicide aircraft design in small numbers to accomplish such missions against U.S. Navy ships. Japan's industry was manufacturing 1,500 new planes a month in 1945.[citation needed]
Toward the end of the war, the Japanese press encouraged civilians to emulate the kamikaze pilots who willingly gave their lives to stop American naval forces. Civilians were told that the reward for such behavior was enshrinement as a warrior-god and spiritual protection in the afterlife.
Expecting increased resistance, including far more Kamikaze attacks once the main islands of Japan were invaded, the U.S. high command rethought its strategy and used atomic bombs to end the war, hoping it would make a costly invasion unnecessary.
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The air attacks on Japan had crippled her ability to wage war but the Japanese had not surrendered. On July 26, 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman, United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Government Chiang Kai-shek issued the Potsdam Declaration, which outlined the terms of surrender for the Empire of Japan as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference. This ultimatum stated if Japan did not surrender, she would face "prompt and utter destruction". The Japanese government ignored this ultimatum (Mokusatsu, "kill by silence"), and vowed to continue resisting an anticipated Allied invasion of Japan. On August 6, 1945, the "Little Boy" enriched uranium atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, followed on August 9 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" plutonium core atomic bomb over Nagasaki. Both cities were destroyed with enormous loss of life and psychological shock. On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan, stating:
"Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects; or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers."
Europe, 1939–1941
The Luftwaffe gained significant combat experience in the Spanish Civil War, where it was used to provide close air support for infantry units. The success of the Luftwaffe's Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers in the blitzkriegs that shattered Poland in 1939 and France in 1940, gave Berlin inordinate confidence in its air force. Military professionals could not ignore the effectiveness of the Stuka, but also observed that France and Poland had minimal effective air defence. Outside Britain, the idea of an integrated air defence system had not emerged; most militaries had a conflict between the advocates of anti-aircraft artillery and fighter aircraft for defence, not recognizing that they could be complementary, when under a common system of command and control; a system that had a common operational picture of the battle in progress.
Invasion of Poland
Luftwaffe aircraft closely supported the advance of the Army mechanized units, most notably with dive bombers, but also with light observation aircraft, such as Fieseler Storch, that rapidly corrected the aim of artillery, and gave commanders a literal overview of the battle. Allied analysts noted that Poland lacked an effective air defence, and was trying to protect too large an area.
France and the Low Countries; Dunkirk
German air-ground coordination was also evident in the 1940 German campaign in the Low Countries and France. The continental air defences were not well-organized.
The Germans deployed among others the tri-motor Ju 52 transport for airborne troops in the attack on the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. The first large-scale air attack with paratroops in history subsequently occurred during the Battle for The Hague. No fewer than 295 Ju 52s were lost in that venture and in other parts of the country, due to varying circumstances, among which were accurate and effective Dutch anti-aircraft defences and German mistakes in using soggy airfields not able to support the heavy aircraft. Thus, almost an entire year's production was lost in the Netherlands. These losses were never surpassed in any air battle in history. The lack of sufficient numbers of aircraft most probably heavily influenced the decision not to invade England following the Battle of Britain. In total, the Germans lost over 2,000 planes in the continuous air war over the Netherlands. This high number can also be attributed to the main Allied air lanes into Germany, that led directly over the Netherlands. Altogether, over 5,000 aircraft were lost over the Netherlands (Allied and German), and over 20,000 crew lost their lives in these mishaps. Most of these crew were buried locally, so that the Netherlands has some 600 places where Allied and Nazi airmen are buried. This makes the country the densest burial place for air crew in all of Europe.
Losses over the Netherlands 1939–1945Allied – German
- Fighters 1,273 –1,175
- Bombers2,164 – 454
- Sea planes; recce 88 – 85
- Transports 132 – 286*
- TOTAL (incl. misc.)3,667 – 2,017 (total 5.684).
(*: 274 of these on May 10, 1940)
While German aircraft inflicted heavy losses at the Battle of Dunkirk, and soldiers awaiting evacuation, while under attack, bitterly asked "Where was the Royal Air Force?", the RAF had been operating more effectively than other air defences in the field, meeting the German attacks before they reached the battlefield.
Battle of Britain
Air superiority or supremacy was a prerequisite to Operation Sea Lion, the planned German invasion of Britain. The Luftwaffe's primary task was intended to be the destruction of the Royal Air Force (RAF). The warplanes on both sides were comparable. Germany had more planes, but they used much of their fuel getting to Britain, and so had more limited time for combat.
The Luftwaffe used 1,300 medium bombers guarded by 900 fighters; they made 1,500 sorties a day from bases in France, Belgium, and Norway. The Germans realized their Ju 87 Stukas and Heinkel He 111s were too vulnerable to modern British fighters. The RAF had 650 fighters, with more coming out of the factories every day. Three main fighter types were involved in the battle—the German Messerschmitt Bf 109E, and the British Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire. The Hurricane accounted for most of the British kills throughout the battle because it made up the majority of the RAF fighter force—however, its kill-loss ratio was inferior to that of its counterpart the Spitfire. Of the three aircraft, the Hurricane was designed much earlier and was generally considered the least capable. Despite the high numbers of Hurricanes in the RAF at that time, the Spitfire became synonymous with the Battle of Britain and was somewhat of a symbol of resistance in the minds of the British public through the battle. The Bf 109E subtype's short combat radius of 330 km (205 mi) – due to limited fuel capacity as designed — prevented it from adequately "escorting" the Kampfgeschwader wings' medium bombers over England, limiting it to only some ten minutes of air combat over the UK before it had turn back for a safe return to northern France—this serious deficiency was not corrected until after the major air battles over England, through September 1940, had concluded.
The Royal Air Force also had at its disposal a complex and integrated network of reporting stations and operations control rooms incorporating the new innovation of radar. Known as the Dowding system (after Hugh Dowding, the commander of RAF Fighter Command during the battle and the man who ordered its implementation), it was the first integrated air defence system in the world, and is often credited with giving the RAF the ability to effectively counter German raids without the need for regular patrols by fighter aircraft, increasing the efficiency with which the RAF fighter force could operate. As such, the Dowding system is also often credited with a significant role in the overall outcome of the battle, and comparisons with the air warfare that occurred over France in the spring and early summer of 1940, in which there was no such system and in which the allied air forces were comprehensively defeated, seem to support this.
At first the Germans focused on RAF airfields and radar stations. However, when the RAF bomber forces (quite separate from the fighter forces) attacked Berlin, Hitler swore revenge and diverted the Luftwaffe to attacks on London. Using limited resources to attack civilians instead of airfields and radar proved a major mistake as the civilians being hit were far less critical than the airfields and radar stations that were now ignored. London was not a factory city and British aircraft production was not impeded; indeed it went up. The last German daylight raid came on September 30; the Luftwaffe realized it was taking unacceptable losses and broke off the attack; occasional blitz raids hit London and other cities from time. In all some 43,000 civilians were killed. The Luftwaffe lost 1,411 planes shot down of a grand total of 2,069 which were written off, the British lost about the same number, but could repair 289 of them. The British additionally lost 497 aircraft of Bomber and RAF Coastal Command shot down during that same period and hundreds of planes destroyed on the ground, lost by accidents or also written off. The successful British defense resulted from a better system that provided more concentration, better utilization of radar, and better ground control.
Invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa opened in June 1941, with striking initial German successes. In the air, many of the Soviets' aircraft were inferior, while the disparity in pilot quality may have been even greater. The purges of military leadership during the Great Terror heavily impacted command and control in all services.
At the outbreak of the war, Soviet Air Forces had just been purged of most of its top officers and was unready. By 1945 Soviet annual aircraft production outstripped that of the German Reich; 157,000 aircraft were produced.
In the first few days of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Luftwaffe destroyed 2,000 Soviet aircraft, most of them on the ground, at a loss of only 35 aircraft. The main weakness accounting for the heavy aircraft losses in 1941 was the lack of experienced generals, pilots, and ground support crews, the destruction of many aircraft on the runways due to command failure to disperse them, and the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht ground troops, forcing the Soviet pilots on the defensive during Operation Barbarossa, while being confronted with more modern German aircraft.
The Soviets relied heavily on Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik ground assault aircraft—the single most-produced military aircraft design of all time with some 36,183 examples produced, and the Yakovlev Yak-1 fighter, the beginning of a family of fighters from Alexander S. Yakovlev's design bureau in its many variants during the war years with just over 34,500 Yak-1, Yak-3, Yak-7, and Yak-9 aircraft produced in total; each of which became the most produced aircraft series of all time in their respective classes, together accounting for about half the strength of the VVS for most of the Great Patriotic War. The Yak-1 was a modern 1940 design and had more room for development, unlike the relatively mature design of the Messerschmitt Bf 109, itself dating from 1935. The Yak-9 brought the VVS to parity with the Luftwaffe, eventually allowing it to gain the upper hand over the Luftwaffe until in 1944, when many Luftwaffe pilots were deliberately avoiding combat.[citation needed]
Chief Marshal of Aviation Alexander Novikov led the VVS from 1942 to the end of the war, and was credited with introducing several new innovations and weapons systems. For the last year of the war German military and civilians retreating towards Berlin were hounded by constant strafing and light bombing. In one strategic operation, the Yassy-Kishinev Strategic Offensive, the 5th and 17th Air Armies and the Black Sea Fleet Naval Aviation aircraft achieved a 3.3:1 superiority in aircraft over the Luftflotte 4 and the Royal Romanian Air Force, allowing almost complete freedom from air harassment for the ground troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts.
As with many Allied countries in World War II, the Soviet Union received Western aircraft through Lend-Lease, mostly Bell P-39 Airacobras, Bell P-63 Kingcobras, Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawks, Douglas A-20 Havocs, Hawker Hurricanes, and North American B-25 Mitchells. Some of these aircraft arrived in the Soviet Union in time to participate in the Battle of Moscow, and in particular with the PVO or Soviet Air Defence Forces. Soviet fliers in P-39s scored the highest individual kill totals of any ever to fly a U.S. aircraft. Two air regiments were equipped with Spitfire Mk.Vbs in early 1943 but immediately experienced unrelenting losses due to friendly fire as the British aircraft looked too much like the German Bf 109. The Soviet Union was then supplied with some 1,200 Spitfire Mk. IXs from 1943. Soviet pilots liked them but they did not suit Soviet combat tactics and the rough conditions at the forward airfields close to the front lines. Spitfires Mk. IXs were therefore assigned to air defense units, using the high altitude performance to intercept and pursue German bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. By 1944, the Spitfire IX was the main fighter used in this role and would remain so until 1947. Lend-Lease aircraft from the U.S. and UK accounted for nearly 12% of total Soviet air power.
The Luftwaffe operated from bases in Norway against the convoys to the Soviet Union. Long-range reconnaissance aircraft, circling the convoys out of their anti-aircraft artillery range, guided in attack aircraft, submarines, and surface ships.
North Africa 1940–1943
North Africa 1942–43
The Anglo-American invasion of Vichy French controlled north-west Africa was under command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. in November, 1942, at a time when the Luftwaffe was still strong. Air operations were split – one force under US control and the other under British control. One of Eisenhower's corps commanders, General Lloyd Fredendall, used his planes as a "combat air patrol" that circled endlessly over his front lines ready to defend against Luftwaffe attackers. Like most infantrymen, Fredendall assumed that all assets should be used to assist the ground forces. More concerned with defence than attack, Fredendall was soon replaced by George Patton.
Likewise, the Luftwaffe made the mistake of dividing up its air assets, and failed to gain control of the air or to cut Allied supplies. The RAF in North Africa, under Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, concentrated its air power and defeated the Luftwaffe. The RAF had an excellent training program (using bases in Canada), maintained very high aircrew morale, and inculcated a fighting spirit. Senior officers monitored battles by radar, and directed planes by radio to where they were most needed.
The RAF's success convinced Eisenhower that its system maximized the effectiveness of tactical air power. The point was that air power had to be consolidated at the highest level, and had to operate almost autonomously. Brigade, division, and corps commanders lost control of air assets (except for a few unarmed little "grasshoppers;" observation aircraft that reported the fall of artillery shells so the gunners could correct their aim). With one airman in overall charge, air assets could be concentrated for maximum offensive capability, not frittered away in ineffective "penny packets". Eisenhower—a tanker in 1918 who had theorized on the best way to concentrate armor—recognized the analogy. Split up among infantry in supporting roles tanks were wasted; concentrated in a powerful force they could dictate the terms of battle.
The fundamental assumption of air power doctrine was that the air war was just as important as the ground war. Indeed, the main function of the sea and ground forces, insisted the air enthusiasts, was to seize forward air bases. Field Manual 100–20, issued in July 1943, became the airman's bible for the rest of the war[citation needed], and taught the doctrine of equality of air and land warfare. The idea of combined arms operations (air, land, sea) strongly appealed to Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. Eisenhower invaded only after he was certain of air supremacy, and he made the establishment of forward air bases his first priority. MacArthur's leaps reflected the same doctrine. In each theatre the senior ground command post had an attached air command post. Requests from the front lines went all the way to the top, where the air commander decided whether to act, when and how. This slowed down response time—it might take 48 hours to arrange a strike—and involved rejecting numerous requests from the infantry for help or intervention at times.[citation needed]
Operations against Allied convoys
German air reconnaissance against North Atlantic and Russian convoys increased, with CAM ships carrying a single fighter still the main defence. The Luftwaffe's first major attack on the convoys began on 25 April 1942 when the 34-ship convoy PQJ6 was attacked. PQ17 to Murmansk started with 36 ships; only two made it through when the Admiralty, falsely thinking Germany was attacking with a battleship, ordered the convoy, and its escort, to scatter. There was no battleship, but the Luftwaffe and a pack of German submarines sank one cruiser[citation needed], one destroyer, two patrol boats (4,000 tons), and 22 merchant ships (139,216 tons). Nevertheless, most convoys did get through.
1943
In some areas, such as the most intense part of the Battle of the Atlantic, the Germans enjoyed fleeting success. Grueling operations wasted the Luftwaffe away on the eastern front after 1942.[dubious – discuss]
In early 1943 the Allied strategic bombers were directed against U-boat pens, which were easy to reach and which represented a major strategic threat to Allied logistics. However, the pens were very solidly built—it took 7,000 flying hours to destroy one sub there, about the same effort that it took to destroy one-third of Cologne.
Japan was also still recovering from Midway. It kept producing planes but made few innovations and the quality of its new pilots deteriorated steadily. Gasoline shortages limited the training and usage of the air forces.
British technical advances
Building on their lead in radar and their experience with the Battle of the Beams, RAF Bomber Command developed a variety of devices to enable precision strategic bombing. Gee and Oboe were beam-riding blind bombing aids, while H2S was the first airborne ground-scanning radar system – enabling improved navigation to a target and bombing at night and through cloud if necessary. These could be used in conjunction with Pathfinder bombers to guarantee accurate strikes on targets in all weathers.
The British also developed the techniques of Operational Research and Analysis, using mathematical techniques to examine military tactics and recommend best practice. These were used to optimise the impacts of night bombing raids, which were expanded to sizes in excess of 1000 bombers attacking one objective. Defensive technologies were invented, such as rear-facing airborne radar to detect night-fighters and the use of Window to blind German radar, giving the RAF striking capability far in excess of that which the Luftwaffe had been able to achieve.
The de Havilland Mosquito bomber was beginning to be delivered in late 1942, combining a useful bomb load with speed to evade German fighters, it was used to harass German air defences as well as challenging strikes such as that on a Gestapo headquarters or prisons as in Operation Jericho
The RAF also developed the use of "earthquake bombs" to attack huge structures thought to be invulnerable to conventional bombing. Creating the largest bomb used in the war and a specialist squadron to deliver it, a number of critical German infrastructure assets were destroyed, such as the Möhne and Edersee Dams.
The use of developments such as these contributed greatly to the success of the air bombing strategy during the remainder of the war.[citation needed]
Mediterranean theatre
In the Mediterranean, the Luftwaffe tried to stop the invasions of Sicily and Italy with tactical bombing. They failed because the Allied air forces systematically destroyed most of their air fields. The Germans ferociously opposed the Allied landing at Anzio in February 1944, but the Luftwaffe was outnumbered 5 to 1 and so outclassed in equipment and skill that it inflicted little damage. Italian air space belonged to the Allies, and the Luftwaffe's strategic capability was nil. The Luftwaffe threw everything it had against the Salerno beachhead, but was outgunned ten to one, and then lost the vital airfields at Foggia.
Foggia became the major base of the 15th Air Force. Its 2,000 heavy bombers hit Germany from the south while the 4,000 heavies of the 8th Air Force used bases in Britain, along with 1,300 RAF heavies. While bad weather in the north often cancelled raids, sunny Italian skies allowed for more action. After that the Luftwaffe had only one success in Italy, a raid on the American port at Bari, in December 1943. Only 30 out of 100 bombers got through, but one hit an ammunition ship which was secretly carrying a stock of mustard gas for retaliatory use should the Germans initiate the use of gas. Clouds of American mustard gas caused over 2,000 Allied and civilian casualties.
1944–45
In early 1944, the Allies continued to bomb Germany, while carefully attacking targets in France that could interfere with the invasion, planned for June.
Destroying the Luftwaffe, 1944
In late 1943, the AAF suddenly realized the need to revise its basic doctrine: strategic bombing against a technologically sophisticated enemy like Germany was impossible without air supremacy. General Arnold replaced Ira Eaker with Carl Spaatz and, most critically, Maj. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, who fully appreciated the new reality. They provided fighter escorts all the way into Germany and back, and cleverly used B-17s as bait for Luftwaffe planes, which the escorts then shot down. Doolittle's slogan was "The First Duty of 8th AF Fighters is to Destroy German Fighters.", one aspect of modern "Offensive Counter-Air" (OCA). In one "Big Week" in February, 1944, American bombers protected by hundreds of fighters, flew 3,800 sorties dropping 10,000 tons of high explosives on the main German aircraft and ball-bearing factories. The US suffered 2,600 casualties, with a loss of 137 bombers and 21 fighters. Ball bearing production was unaffected, as Nazi munitions boss Albert Speer repaired the damage in a few weeks; he even managed to double aircraft production. Sensing the danger, Speer began dispersing production into numerous small, hidden factories.
By 1944, the Allies had overwhelming advantages. The Luftwaffe would have to come out and attack or see its planes destroyed at the factory. Before getting at the bombers, ideally with the twin-engined Zerstörer heavy fighters meant for such tasks, the Germans had to confront the more numerous American fighters. The heavily armed Messerschmitt Bf 110 could kill a bomber, particularly those armed with a quartet each of the BR 21 large-calibre air-to-air unguided rockets, but its slower speed made it easy prey for Thunderbolts and Mustangs. The big, slow twin-engine Junkers Ju 88C, used for bomber destroyer duties in 1942-3 as the American heavy bomber offensive got under way in August 1942, was dangerous because it could stand further off and fire its autocannon armament into the tight B-17 formations, sometimes with the specialized Ju 88P heavy-calibre Bordkanone armed bomber destroyers attacking; but they too were hunted down. The same fate also faced single-engined fighters carrying pairs of the BR 21 rockets each; and the later-used, heavily autocannon-armed Sturmbock bomber destroyer models of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190A-8 that replaced the twin-engined "destroyers". Germany's severe shortage of aviation fuel had sharply curtailed the training of new pilots, and most of the instructors had been themselves sent into battle. Rookie pilots were rushed into combat after only 160 flying hours in training compared to 400 hours for the AAF, 360 for the RAF, and 120 for the Japanese. The low quality German pilots of this late stage in the war never had a chance against more numerous, better trained Allied pilots.
The Germans began losing one thousand planes a month on the western front (and another 400 on the eastern front). Realizing that the best way to defeat the Luftwaffe was not to stick close to the bombers but to aggressively seek out the enemy, by March 1944 Doolittle had ordered the Mustangs to "go hunting for Jerries. Flush them out in the air and beat them up on the ground on the way home.", as Mustangs were now ordered to fly in massive "fighter sweeps" well ahead of the American combat box heavy bomber formations, as a determined form of air supremacy effort, clearing the skies well ahead of the bombers of any presence of the Luftwaffe's Jagdflieger fighter pilots. By early 1944, with the Zerstörergeschwader-flown heavy Bf 110G and Me 410A Hornisse twin-engined fighters being decimated by the Mustangs whenever they appeared, direct attack against the bombers was carried out instead by the Luftwaffe's so-named Gefechtsverband formations with heavily armed Fw 190As being escorted by Bf 109Gs as high-altitude escorts for the autocannon-armed 190As when flying against the USAAF's combat box formations. However, Doolittle's new air supremacy strategy fatally disabled virtually any and all of the Luftwaffe's defensive efforts throughout 1944. On one occasion German air controllers identified a large force of approaching B-17s, and sent all the Luftwaffe's 750 fighters to attack. The bogeys were all Mustangs flying well ahead of the American bombers' combat boxes, which shot down 98 interceptors while losing 11. The actual B-17s were well behind the Mustangs, and completed their mission without a loss. In February, 1944, the Luftwaffe lost 33% of its frontline fighters and 18% of its pilots; the next month it lost 56% of its fighters and 22% of the pilots. April was just as bad, 43% and 20%, and May was worst of all, at 50% and 25%. German factories continued to produce many new planes, and inexperienced new pilots did report for duty; but their life expectancy was down to a few combat sorties. Increasingly the Luftwaffe went into hiding; with losses down to 1% per mission, the bombers now got through.
By April 1944, Luftwaffe tactical air power had vanished, and Eisenhower decided he could go ahead with the invasion of Normandy. He guaranteed the invaders that "if you see fighting aircraft over you, they will be ours."
For the last year of the war German military and civilians retreating towards Berlin were hounded by the presence of Soviet "low flying aircraft" strafing and bombing them, an activity in which even the ancient Polikarpov Po-2, a much produced flight training (uchebnyy) biplane of 1920s design, took part. However, this was but a small measure of the experience the Wehrmacht were receiving due to the sophistication and superiority of the Red Air Force. In one strategic operation alone, the Yassy-Kishinev Strategic Offensive, the 5th and 17th Air Armys and the Black Sea Fleet Naval Aviation aircraft achieved a 3.3 to 1 superiority in aircraft over Luftflotte 4 and the Royal Romanian Air Force, allowing almost complete freedom from air harassment for the ground troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts. The greatest Soviet fighter ace of World War II was Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub, who scored 62 victories from 6 July 1943 to 16 April 1945, the top score for any Allied fighter pilot of World War II.
Normandy
As the Luftwaffe disintegrated in 1944, escorting became less necessary and fighters were increasingly assigned to tactical ground-attack missions, along with the medium bombers. To avoid the lethal fast-firing German quadruple 20mm flak guns, pilots came in fast and low (under enemy radar), made a quick run, then disappeared before the gunners could respond. The main missions were to keep the Luftwaffe suppressed by shooting up airstrips, and to interdict the movement of munitions, oil, and troops by attacking at railway bridges and tunnels, oil tank farms, canal barges, trucks, and moving trains. Occasionally a choice target was discovered through intelligence. Three days after D-Day, Ultra intelligence pinpointed the location of Panzer Group West headquarters. A quick raid by British aircraft destroyed its radio gear and killed many key officers, ruining the Germans' ability to coordinate a panzer counterattack against the beachheads.
On D-Day itself, Allied aircraft flew 14,000 sorties, while the Luftwaffe managed a mere 260, mostly in defence of its own battered airfields. In the two weeks after D-Day, the Luftwaffe lost 600 of the 800 planes it kept in France. From April through August 1944, both the AAF's and the RAF's strategic bombers were placed under Eisenhower's direction, where they were used tactically to support the invasion. Airmen protested vigorously against this subordination of the air war to the land campaign, but Eisenhower forced the issue and used the bombers to simultaneously strangle Germany's supply system, burn out its oil refineries, and destroy its warplanes. With this accomplished, Eisenhower relinquished control of the bombers in September.
In Europe in summer 1944 the AAF started operating out of bases in France. It had about 1,300 light bomber crews and 4,500 fighter pilots. They claimed destruction of 86,000 railroad cars, 9,000 locomotives, 68,000 trucks, and 6,000 tanks and armored artillery pieces. P-47 Thunderbolts alone dropped 120,000 tons of bombs and thousands of tanks of napalm, fired 135 million bullets and 60,000 rockets, and claimed 4,000 enemy planes destroyed. Beyond the destruction itself, the appearance of unopposed Allied fighter-bombers ruined morale, as privates and generals alike dove for the ditches. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, for example, was seriously wounded in July, 1944, when he dared to ride around France in the daytime. The commander of the elite 2nd Panzer Division fulminated:
- "They have complete mastery of the air. They bomb and strafe every movement, even single vehicles and individuals. They reconnoiter our area constantly and direct their artillery fire ... The feeling of helplessness against enemy aircraft has a paralyzing effect, and during the bombing barrage the effect on inexperienced troops is literally 'soul-shattering.'"
Battle of the Bulge
At the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, the Allies were caught by surprise by a large scale German offensive. In the first days bad weather grounded all planes. When the skies cleared, 52,000 AAF and 12,000 RAF sorties against German positions and supply lines immediately doomed Hitler's last offensive. General George Patton said the cooperation of XIX TAC Air Force was "the best example of the combined use of air and ground troops that I ever witnessed."
Strategic operations
An around-the-clock campaign attacked Germany, with British bombers at night and U.S. aircraft during the day. The aircraft, tactics, and doctrines were different; there is argument over how complementary they were in achieving strategic effect.
The Luftwaffe reached a maximum size of 1.9 million airmen in 1942. Grueling operations wasted it away on the Eastern Front after 1942. It lost most of its fighter aircraft to Mustangs in 1944 while trying to defend against massive American and British air raids, and many of the men were sent to the infantry. The Luftwaffe in 1944–45 concentrated on anti-aircraft defences, especially the flak batteries that surrounded all major German cities and war plants. They consumed a large fraction of all German munitions production in the last year of the war. The flak units employed hundreds of thousands of women, who engaged in combat against the Allied bombers.
The jet-powered German Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe far outclassed the best allied piston engined fighters on an individual basis. However, its protracted development history (including such factors as, a substantial cutback in funding jet engine research during the critical 1941–42 development period, Germany's lack of access to certain exotic raw materials necessary to produce durable jet engines, allied strategic bombing of jet engine production lines, and Hitler personally ordering design modifications to make the aircraft functional as a fighter-bomber) ensured that the Me 262 was delayed and produced too late and in too small numbers to stem the Allied tide. The Germans also developed air-to-surface missiles (Fritz X, Hs 293,) surface-to-air missiles (Wasserfall,) cruise missiles (V-1) and ballistic missiles (V-2,) and other advanced technologies of air warfare, to little strategic effect. Captured examples of these weapons, and especially of their designers, contributed to Allied and Soviet military technologies of the Cold War, and also of the space race.
Destroying Germany's oil and transportation
Besides knocking out the Luftwaffe, the second most striking achievement of the strategic bombing campaign was the destruction of the German oil supply. Oil was essential for U-boats and tanks, while very high-quality aviation gasoline was essential for piston-engined aircraft.
The third notable achievement of the bombing campaign was the degradation of the German transportation system—its railroads and canals (there was little road traffic). In the two months before and after D-Day, American B-24 Liberators, B-17 Flying Fortresses, and British heavy bombers such as the Lancasters hammered away at the French railroad system. Underground Resistance fighters sabotaged some 350 locomotives and 15,000 freight cars every month. Critical bridges and tunnels were cut by bombing or sabotage. Berlin responded by sending in 60,000 German railway workers, but even they took two or three days to reopen a line after heavy raids on switching yards. The system deteriorated quickly, and it proved incapable of carrying reinforcements and supplies to oppose the Normandy invasion.
Effect of the strategic bombing
Germany and Japan were burned out and lost the war in large part because of strategic bombing. Targeting became more accurate in 1944, but the solution to inaccurate bombs was using more of them. The AAF dropped 3.5 million bombs (500,000 tons) against Japan, and 8 million (1.6 million tons) against Germany. The RAF expended about the same tonnage against Germany. US Navy and Marine bombs against Japan are not included, nor are the two atomic bombs.
The cost of the US tactical and strategic air war against Germany was 18,400 aircraft lost in combat, 51,000 dead, 30,000 POWs, and 13,000 wounded. Against Japan, the AAF lost 4,500 planes, 16,000 dead, 6,000 POWs, and 5,000 wounded; Marine Aviation lost 1,600 killed, 1,100 wounded. Naval aviation lost several thousand dead.
One fourth of the German war economy was neutralized because of direct bomb damage, the resulting delays, shortages, and roundabout solutions, and the spending on anti-aircraft, civil defence, repair, and removal of factories to safer locations. The raids were so large and often repeated that in city after city, the repair system broke down. The bombing prevented the full mobilization of German economic potential. Planning minister Albert Speer and his staff were effective in improvising solutions and work-arounds, but their challenge became more difficult every week as one backup system after another broke down. By March 1945, most of Germany's factories, railroads, and telephones had stopped working; troops, tanks, trains, and trucks were immobilized. About 25,000 civilians died in Dresden on Feb. 13–14, where a firestorm erupted. Overy estimated in 2014 that in all about 353,000 civilians were killed by British and American bombing of German cities.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, was disconsolate when his beautiful ministry buildings were totally burned out: "The air war has now turned into a crazy orgy. We are totally defenceless against it. The Reich will gradually be turned into a complete desert."
The Dresden raid was to be dwarfed by what was to hit Japan starting less than a month later—as initiated by General Curtis E. LeMay, a series of firebombing raids, launched with the first attack by some 334 American B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers on the night of March 9–10, 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, burned out some 16 square miles (41 km2.) of the capital city of Japan and turned out to be the single most destructive bombing raid in all of aviation history, even greater in initial loss of life (at 100,000 lives lost at minimum, and up to 1.5 million people homeless) than the August 6 & 9 atomic raids, each taken as single events.
See also
- Aviation in World War II
- List of air operations during the Battle of Europe
- Battle of Britain
- Battle of the Atlantic
- Military production during World War II
- Strategic bombing during World War II
- Victory Through Air Power
Notes
- The British and American jets were in the development stage when the war ended.
- Jet engines ran on cheap kerosene, and rockets used plain alcohol; the railroad system used coal, which was in abundant supply.
References
Citations
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格鬥中，徐吉驤發現自己的座機無論爬升、滾轉、下降還是加速均不如這種兇猛的日機，唯有盤旋半徑尚可和敵機稍比一下高低。雖然他多次占位咬上了日機，但是偏偏他座機的機槍扳機調的太緊，射擊時總是慢半拍，無法把握來之不易的戰機。雖然這樣，徐吉驤仍然沒有脫離戰場，因為他認為日機由漢口、宜昌勞師遠襲，油料必然不足支撐久戰，只要在堅持一段時間，便可以利用日機油盡返航的時機予以打擊、糾纏，那時便可以挽回一點面子。也就是這樣的想法，使得大多數的中國飛行員在空中苦苦鏖戰。不料，這次不行了！... 最後，他座機發動機的潤滑油漏光了，這架伊-152在璧山上空停車。徐吉驤迅速判斷了一下形勢，決定不跳傘，以免被兇殘的日機沖傘射擊。他躲掉日機攻擊後奇跡般的迫降在一片稻田裡，飛機被摔得七零八落。幸好燃油、滑油均已耗盡，飛機沒有燃燒。徐吉驤機智地躲在座機殘骸內，等盤旋在頭頂的兩架日機離去後，才爬出完全損壞的座機。
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One week before Christmas in 1944, nearly 200 American planes raided the Chinese city of Wuhan, dropping 500 tons of incendiary bombs. Thousands of Chinese lives were lost in this incident, which has received very little attention in the intervening decades. Here is a rare account of this tragic event, by Stephen R. MacKinnon, history professor at Arizona State University and author of the book Wuhan 1938.
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- Stephen Bungay, Most Dangerous Enemy: The Definitive History of the Battle of Britain (2000)
- Wagner, Ray; Nowarra, Heinz (1971). German Combat Planes: A Comprehensive Survey and History of the Development of German Military Aircraft from 1914 to 1945. New York City: Doubleday & Company. p. 229.
- Hermann Plocher, The German Air Force Versus Russia, 1941–1943 (1968)
- Lonnie O. Ratley, III, "A Lesson of History: The Luftwaffe and Barbarossa Archived 2014-09-25 at the Wayback Machine". Air University Review (March–April 1983).
- Christer Bergström, Barbarossa: The Air Battle July–December 1941 (2007)
- Buckley, John (1999). Air Power in the Age of Total War. Indiana University Press. pp. 134, 143. ISBN 0-253-33557-4.
- Ray Wagner, ed., The Soviet Air Force in World War II: The Official History. Melbourne: Wren Publishing, 1973, p.301. ISBN 0-85885-194-6.
- Hill, Alexander (2007). "British Lend Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort, June 1941 – June 1942". The Journal of Military History. 71 (3): 773–808. doi:10.1353/jmh.2007.0206. JSTOR 30052890. S2CID 159715267.
- Hardesty 1991, p. 135.
- Red Phoenix, p. 253 (Appendixes)
- Sönke Neitzel, "Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe Co-operation in the War against Britain, 1939–1945." War in History (2003) 10#4 pp: 448–463.
- Wesley Frank Craven and James L. Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II: v. 2. Europe: Torch to Pointblank (1949) pp 41–165 online Archived 2009-03-25 at the Wayback Machine
- Ehlers, Robert S. Jr. The Mediterranean Air War: Airpower and Allied Victory in World War II (2015)
- Mayock, Thomas J. (1949), "I. The North African Campaigns", in Craven; Cate (eds.), The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 2. Europe: Torch to Pointblank, pp. 205–6 – via Hyperwar Foundation
- Max Hastings, The Second World War: A World in Flames (2004) p 131
- Manfred Griehl, Fighters Over Russia (1997)
- Webster & Franklin, 4:24
- George Southern, Poisonous inferno: World War II tragedy at Bari Harbour (2002)
- Craven & Cate, 3:43–6
- Horst Boog, ed. Germany and the Second World War: Volume VII: The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943–1944/5 (2006) pp 159–256
- Murray, Strategy for Defeat p 308–9
- Stephen L. McFarland and Wesley Phillips Newton, To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority Over Germany, 1942–1944 (2006) p. 160
- Craven and Cate 3:664
- McFarland and Newton, To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority Over Germany, 1942–1944 (2006) p. 239
- Wagner, Ray (ed.), and Leland Fetzer (trans.). The Soviet Air Force in World War II: The Official History. Melbourne: Wren Publishing, 1973, p.301. ISBN 0-85885-194-6.
- "Aviation History: Interview with World War II Soviet Ace Ivan Kozhedub". HistoryNet. 12 June 2006. Archived from the original on 1 September 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
- Murray, Luftwaffe 183, 207, 211; Craven & Cate, 3:47
- Craven & Cate 3:227, 235
- Craven & Cate 3:272
- British Air Ministry, Rise and Fall of the German Air Force (1948)
- Edward B. Westermann, Flak: German Anti-Aircraft defences, 1914–1945 (2005) pp. 257–84.
- Overy, Air War p. 121.
- D'Ann Campbell, "Women in Combat: The World War Two Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union," Journal of Military History (April 1993), 57:301–323 online
- Levine, Alan J. (1992). The Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. p. 143. ISBN 0-275-94319-4.
- Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (1997) pp 2, 20
- Office of Statistical Control, Army Air Forces Statistical Digest: World War II (1945) table 34 online Archived 2012-03-26 at the Wayback Machine
- R. J. Overy, The Air War: 1939–1945 (1980) p 122–25
- Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970) pp 278–91
- Mark Clodfelter, Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917–1945 (2011) pp. 148, 174, 178
- Richard Overy, The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940–1945 (2014) pp 306–7
- Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed. Final entries, 1945: the diaries of Joseph Goebbels (1978) p. 18
- Long, Tony (March 9, 2011). "March 9, 1945: Burning the Heart Out of the Enemy". www.wired.com. Condé Nast Digital. Retrieved February 18, 2015.
Sources
- Boog, Horst, ed. The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War: An International Comparison (1992)
- Cheung, Raymond. OSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES 126: Aces of the Republic of China Air Force. Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015. ISBN 978 14728 05614.
- Overy, Richard J. The Air War, 1939–1945 (1981),
- Murray, Williamson. Luftwaffe: Strategy for Defeat, 1933–1945 (1985), "online edition". Archived from the original on 2003-03-07. Retrieved 2009-11-25.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Craven, Wesley Frank and J. L. Cate. The Army Air Forces in World War II (1949), online edition
- Golberg, Alfred ed. A History of the United States Air Force, 1907–1957 (1957)
- Bungay, Stephen. The Most Dangerous Enemy: The Definitive History of the Battle of Britain (2nd ed., 2010)
- This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article "World War II, air war", which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License but not under the GFDL.
- This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article "Air warfare of World War II", which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License but not under the GFDL.
Further reading
Based on Citizendium bibliography
- Ehlers, Robert S. Jr. The Mediterranean Air War: Airpower and Allied Victory in World War II (2015)
- Werrell, Kenneth P. "The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II: Costs and Accomplishments," Journal of American History 73 (1986) 702–713 in JSTOR
By country
United States
- Futtrel, Robert Frank. Ideas, Concepts, Doctrines: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, 1907–1960 (1989) influential overview online edition
- Official Guide to the Army Air Forces (1944), reprinted as AAF: A Directory, Almanac and Chronicle of Achievement (1988)
Great Britain
- Fisher, David E, A Summer Bright and Terrible: Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain (2005)
- Hamlin, John F. "No 'Safe Haven': Military Aviation in the Channel Islands 1939–1945" Air Enthusiast, No. 83, September/October 1999, pp. 6–15 ISSN 0143-5450
- Hough, Richard and Denis Richards. The Battle of Britain (1989) 480 pp
- Messenger, Charles, "Bomber" Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive, 1939–1945 (1984), defends Harris
- Overy, Richard. The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality (2001) 192 pages
- Richards, Dennis, et al. Royal Air Force, 1939–1945: The Fight at Odds – Vol. 1 (HMSO 1953), official history; vol 3 online edition
- Terraine, John. A Time for Courage: The Royal Air Force in the European War, 1939–1945 (1985)
- Verrier, Anthony. The Bomber Offensive (1969), British
- Webster, Charles and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939–1945 (HMSO, 1961), 4 vol. Important official British history
- Wood, Derek, and Derek D. Dempster. The Narrow Margin: The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power 1930–40 (1975)
Germany
- British Air Ministry. Rise and Fall of the German Air Force (1948, reprint 1969), excellent official history; reprint has introduction by H. A. Probert, who was not the author
- Fritzsche, Peter. "Machine Dreams: Airmindedness and the Reinvention of Germany." American Historical Review, 98 (June 1993): 685–710. Air warfare was seen as a growing threat to Germany, and it became a means of national mobilization and redemption. Nazi Germany believed that air warfare would allow the country to rebuild itself in a racial compact. During World War II, air warfare became a means for rejuvenating authority domestically and increasing imperial influence abroad.
- Galland, Adolf. The First and the Last: German Fighter Forces in World War II (1955)
- Murray, Williamson. Luftwaffe: Strategy for Defeat, 1933–1945 (1985), standard history"online edition". Archived from the original on 2003-03-07. Retrieved 2009-11-25.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Overy, Richard. Goering (1984)
- Wagner, Ray and Nowarra, Heinz. German Combat Planes: A Comprehensive Survey and History of the Development of German Military Aircraft from 1914 to 1945. New York: Doubleday (1971)
- Wilt, Alan F. (Alan F. Wilt) War from the Top: German and British Military Decision Making During World War II (1990)
- Overy R. J. "The German Pre-War Aircraft Production Plans: November 1936 – April 1939," The English Historical Review Vol. 90, No. 357 (Oct., 1975), pp. 778–797 in JSTOR
Japan
- Coox, Alvin D. "The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Air Forces," in Alfred F. Hurley and Robert C. Erhart, eds. Air Power and Air Warfare (1979) 84–97.
- Inoguchi, Rikihei and Tadashi Nakajima, The Divine Wind: Japan's Kamikaze Force in World War II (1958)
USSR
- Bhuvasorakul, Jessica Leigh. "Unit Cohesion Among the Three Soviet Women's Air Regiments During World War II." (2004). online
- Gordon, Yefim. Soviet Air Power in World War 2 (2008)
- Hardesty, Von. "Out of the Blue: The Forgotten Story of the Soviet Air Force in World War II." Historically Speaking (2012) 13#4 pp: 23–25. historiography
- Hardesty, Von, and V. Hardesty. Red Phoenix: The Rise of Soviet Air Power, 1941–1945 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982)
- Kipp, Jacob W. "Barbarossa, Soviet covering forces and the initial period of war: Military history and AirLand battle." Journal of Slavic Military Studies (1988) 1#2 pp: 188–212.
- Sterrett, James. Soviet Air Force Theory, 1918–1945 (Routledge, 2007)
- Wagner, Ray, ed. Soviet Air Force in World War II: The Official History (1973)
- Whiting, Kenneth R. "Soviet Air Power in World War II," in Alfred F. Hurley and Robert C. Erhart, eds. Air Power and Air Warfare (1979) 98–127
Airmen
- Bhuvasorakul, Jessica Leigh. "Unit Cohesion Among the Three Soviet Women's Air Regiments During World War II." (2004). online
- Byrd, Martha. Chennault: Giving Wings to the Tiger (1987) 451 pp., the standard biography
- Ford, Daniel. Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group (1991).
- Caine, Philip D. American Pilots in the RAF: The WWII Eagle Squadrons (1993)
- Craven, Wesley Frank and J. L. Cate. The Army Air Forces in World War II (1949), vol. 6: Men and Planes; vol 7. Services Around the World (including medical, engineering, WAC) online edition
- Davis, Benjamin O. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American: An Autobiography. (1991), prominent black flier
- Dunn, William R. Fighter Pilot: The First American Ace of World War II (1982)
- Francis, Charles E. (1997). The Tuskegee Airmen: The Men who Changed a Nation. Branden Books. ISBN 978-0-8283-2029-0.
- Francis, Martin. The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force, 1939–1945 (2009), culture and ideology of flying
- Freeman, Roger. The American Airman in Europe (1992)
- Freeman, Roger. The British Airman (1989)
- Hawkins, Ian ed. B-17s Over Berlin: Personal Stories from the 95th Bomb Group (H) (1990)
- Link, Mae Mills and Hubert A. Coleman. Medical Support of the Army Air Forces in World War II (GPO, 1955)
- McGovern, James R. Black Eagle: General Daniel "Chappie" James, Jr. (1985), leading black pilot.
- Miller, Donald L. Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany (2006) excerpt
- Morrison, Wilbur H. Point of No Return: The Story of the 20th Air Force (1979)
- Nanney, James S. Army Air Forces Medical Services in World War II (1998) online edition
- Newby, Leroy W. Target Ploesti: View from a Bombsight (1983)
- Nichol, John. Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War, 1944–45 (2006)
- Osur, Alan M. Blacks in the Army Air Forces during World War II : The Problem of Race Relations (1986) online edition
Commanders
Air Commanders: American
- Byrd, Martha. Chennault: Giving Wings to the Tiger (1987) 451 pp.
- Davis, Richard G. Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe (1993)
- Frisbee, John L., ed. Makers of the United States Air Force (USAF, 1987), short biographies
- Kenney, George C. General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War (1949), primary source
- Leary, William ed. We Shall Return! MacArthur's Commanders and the Defeat of Japan, 1942–1945 (1988)
- LeMay, Curtis. Mission with LeMay (1965), autobiography, primary source
- Meilinger, Phillip S. Hoyt S. Vandenberg: The Life of a General (1989)
- Mets, David R. Master of Airpower: General Carl A. Spaatz (1988)
HAP Arnold and Stimson
- Arnold, Henry H. Global Mission (1949), autobiography.
- Bonnett, John. "Jekyll and Hyde: Henry L. Stimson, Mentalite, and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb on Japan." War in History 1997 4(2): 174–212. ISSN 0968-3445 Fulltext: Ebsco
- Coffey, Thomas. Hap: General of the Air Force Henry Arnold (1982)
- Davis, Richard G. HAP: Henry H. Arnold, Military Aviator (1997) 38 pp online edition* Huston, John W. "The Wartime Leadership of 'Hap' Arnold." In Alfred F. Hurley and Robert C. Erhart, eds. Air Power and Air Warfare (1979) 168–85.
- Huston, John W., American Airpower Comes of Age: Gen Henry H. Arnold's World War II Diaries, (2002), primary source;"vol. 1 online". Archived from the original on 2003-03-06. Retrieved 2009-11-25.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Larrabee, Eric. Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War (1987), chapters on Arnold and LeMay.
- Malloy, Sean L. Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb Against Japan (2008)
Air Commanders: Other
- Messenger, Charles. "Bomber" Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive, 1939–1945 (1984), defends Harris
- Overy, Richard. Goering (1984)
Technology: Jets, Rockets, Radar, Proximity Fuze
- Baumann, Ansbert. "Evakuierung des Wissens. Die Verlagerung luftkriegsrelevanter Forschungsinstitute nach Oberschwaben 1943–1945." Zeitschrift für württembergische Landesgeschichte, 67 (2008): 461–496.
- Baxter, James Phinney. Scientists Against Time (1946)
- Brown, Louis. A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives (1999) online excerpt
- Constant II, Edward W. The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (1980)
- Longmate, Norman. Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s (1985).
- Moye, William T. Developing the Proximity Fuze, and Its Legacy (2003) online version
- Neufeld, Michael J. "Hitler, the V-2, and the Battle for Priority, 1939–1943." The Journal of Military History, 57 (July 1993): 5–38. in JSTOR
- Neufeld, Michael J. The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (1995)
- Swords, Seán S. Technical History of the Beginnings of Radar (1986)
Tactical aircraft, weapons, tactics & combat
- Batchelor, John and Bryan Cooper. Fighter: A History of Fighter Aircraft (1973)
- Cooling, Benjamin Franklin ed. Close Air Support (1990) GPO
- Craven, Wesley Frank and J. L. Cate. The Army Air Forces in World War II (1949), vol. 6: Men and Planes online edition
- Francillon, R. J. Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War (1970)
- Gruen, Adam L. Preemptive defence: Allied Air Power Versus Hitler's V-Weapons, 1943–1945 (1999) online edition
- Hallion, Richard P. D Day 1944: Air Power Over the Normandy Beaches and Beyond (1998) online edition
- Hallion, Richard P. Strike From the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1911–1945 (1989)
- Hogg, I.V. Anti-Aircraft: A History of Air Defence (1978)
- Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II (1989)
- Lundstrom, John B. The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat From Pearl Harbor to Midway (1984)
- McFarland, Stephen L. and Wesley Phillips Newton. To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942–1944 (1991)
- Mikesh, Robert C. Broken Wings of the Samurai: the Destruction of the Japanese Airforce (1993)
- Mixon, Franklin G. "Estimating Learning Curves in Economics: Evidence from Aerial Combat over the Third Reich." KYKLOS 46 (Fall 1993) 411–19. Germans learned faster (if they survived)
- Mortensen. Daniel R. ed. Airpower and Ground Armies: Essays on the Evolution of Anglo-American Air Doctrine, 1940–1943, (1998)"online edition". Archived from the original on 2003-04-07. Retrieved 2009-11-25.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Okumiya, Masatake and Jiro Horikoshi, with Martin Caidin, Zero! (1956)
- Schlaifer, Robert. Development of Aircraft Engines (1950)
- Sherrod, Robert. History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II (1952)
- Spire, David N. Air Power for Patton's Army: The 19th Tactical Air Command in the Second World War (2002) online edition
- Warnock, A. Timothy. Air Power versus U-boats: Confronting Hitler's Submarine Menace in the European theatre (1999) online edition
- Werrell, Kenneth P. Archie, Flak, AAA, and SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air defence (GPO 1988)"online edition". Archived from the original on 2003-03-07. Retrieved 2009-11-25.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
Strategic bombing
Atomic bomb & surrender of Japan
- Allen, Thomas B. and Norman Polmar. Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan-And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb (1995)
- Bernstein, Barton. "Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Early Thinking About Tactical Nuclear Weapons," International Security (Spring 1991) 149–173 in JSTOR
- Bernstein, Barton F. "The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered." Foreign Affairs, 74 (Jan–Feb 1995) 135–52.
- Feis, Herbert. Japan Subdued: The Atomic Bomb and the End of the War in the Pacific (1961)
- Gordin, Michael D. (2009). Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-2410-6.
- Holley, I. B., ed. Hiroshima After Forty Years (1992)
- Jones, Vincent C. Manhattan: The Army and the Bomb (GPO, 1985), official construction history
- Libby, Justin. "The Search for a Negotiated Peace: Japanese Diplomats Attempt to Surrender Japan Prior to the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." World Affairs, 156 (Summer 1993): 35–45.
- Miles, Rufus E. Jr. "Hiroshima: The Strange Myth of a Half Million American Lives Saved" International Security 10 (Fall 1985): 121–40.
- Pape, Robert A. "Why Japan Surrendered." International Security 18 (Fall 1993): 154–201 in JSTOR
- Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), good overview excerpt and text search
- Rotter, Andrew J. Hiroshima: The World's Bomb (2008) excerpt and text search
- Skates, John. The Invasion of Japan (1994), excellent military history of the greatest non-battle of all time
- VanderMuelen, Jacob. "Planning for V-J Day by the U.S. Army Air Forces and the Atomic Bomb Controversy." Journal of Strategic Studies 16 (June 1993), 227–39. AAF did not expect quick surrender; bomb was military use
- Walker, J. Samuel. "The Decision to Drop the Bomb: A Historiographical Update," Diplomatic History 14 (1990) 97–114. Especially useful.
- Walker, J. Samuel. Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan (2004) online excerpt
Ethics & civilians
- Childers, Thomas. "'Facilis descensus averni est': The Allied Bombing of Germany and the Issue of German Suffering," Central European History Vol. 38, No. 1 (2005), pp. 75–105 in JSTOR
- Crane, Conrad C. Bombs, Cities and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II (1993)
- Crane, Conrad C. "Evolution of U.S. Strategic Bombing of Urban Areas," Historian 50 (Nov 1987) 14–39, defends AAF
- Davis, Richard G. "Operation 'Thunderclap': The US Army Air Forces and the Bombing of Berlin." Journal of Strategic Studies (March 1991) 14:90–111.
- Garrett, Stephen A., Ethics and Airpower in World War II: The British Bombing of German Cities (1993)
- Havens, Thomas R. H. Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two (1978)
- Hopkins, George F. "Bombing and the American Conscience During World War II," The Historian 28 (May 1966): 451–73
- Lammers, Stephen E. "William Temple and the bombing of Germany: an Exploration in the Just War Tradition." The Journal of Religious Ethics, 19 (Spring 1991): 71–93. Explains how the Archbishop of Canterbury justified strategic bombing.
- Markusen, Eric, and David Kopf. The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century (1995)
- Overy, Richard. The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940–1945 (2014) covers strategic bombing by and upon all major countries excerpt and text search
- Schaffer, Ronald. "American Military Ethics in World War II: The Bombing of German Civilians," Journal of American History 67 (1980) 318–34 in JSTOR
- Schaffer, Ronald. Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (1985)
- Spaight, J. M. Air Power and War Rights (1947), legal
- Speer, Alfred. Inside the Third Reich (1970), memoir of top Nazi economic planner
- Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (1977), philosophical approach
Strategic bombing: doctrine
- Boog, Horst, ed. The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War (1992)
- Clodfelter, Mark. "Aiming to Break Will: America's World War II Bombing of German Morale and its Ramifications," Journal of Strategic Studies, June 2010, Vol. 33 Issue 3, pp 401–435
- Davis, Richard G. "Bombing Strategy Shifts, 1944–45," Air Power History 39 (1989) 33–45
- Griffith, Charles. The quest Haywood Hansell and American strategic bombing in World War II. (1999) ISBN 978-1-4289-9131-6.
- Haywood S. Hansell. The Air Plan that Defeated Hitler. Arno Press; 1980. ISBN 978-0-405-12178-4.
- Kennett, Lee B. A History of Strategic Bombing (1982)
- Koch, H. W. "The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany: the Early Phase, May–September 1940." The Historical Journal, 34 (March 1991) pp 117–41. online at JSTOR
- Levine, Alan J. The Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945 (1992) online edition Archived 2012-07-16 at the Wayback Machine
- MacIsaac, David. Strategic Bombing in World War Two (1976)
- McFarland, Stephen L. "The Evolution of the American Strategic Fighter in Europe, 1942–44," Journal of Strategic Studies 10 (1987) 189–208
- Messenger, Charles, "Bomber" Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive, 1939–1945 (1984), defends Harris
- Overy. Richard. "The Means to Victory: Bombs and Bombing" in Overy, Why the Allies Won (1995), pp 101–33
- Sherry, Michael. The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (1987), important study 1930s–1960s
- Smith, Malcolm. "The Allied Air Offensive," Journal of Strategic Studies 13 (Mar 1990) 67–83
- Sterrett, James. Soviet Air Force Theory, 1918–1945 (Routledge, 2007)
- Verrier, Anthony. The Bomber Offensive (1968), British
- Webster, Charles and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939–1945 (HMSO, 1961), 4 vol. Important official British history
- Wells, Mark K. Courage and air warfare: the Allied aircrew experience in the Second World War (1995)
- Werrell, Kenneth P. "The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II: Costs and Accomplishments," Journal of American History 73 (1986) 702–713; good place to start. in JSTOR
- Werrell, Kenneth P. Death From the Heavens: A History of Strategic Bombing (2009)
Strategic bombing: aircraft and target
- Beck, Earl R. Under the Bombs: The German Home Front, 1942–1945 (1986)
- Berger, Carl. B-29: The Superfortress (1970)
- Bond, Horatio, ed. Fire and the Air War (1974)
- Boog, Horst, ed. Germany and the Second World War: Volume VII: The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943–1944/5 (Oxford UP, 2006), 928pp official German history vol 7 excerpt and text search; online edition
- Charman, T. C. The German Home Front, 1939–45 (1989)
- Craven, Wesley Frank and J. L. Cate. The Army Air Forces in World War II (1949), vol. 6: Men and Planes online edition
- Cross, Robin. The Bombers: The Illustrated Story of Offensive Strategy and Tactics in the Twentieth Century (1987)
- Daniels, Gordon ed. A Guide to the Reports of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (1981)
- Davis, Richard G. Bombing the European Axis Powers: A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive, 1939–1945 (2006)"online edition" (PDF). Archived from the original on 2009-03-05. Retrieved 2011-10-03.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Edoin, Hoito. The Night Tokyo Burned: The Incendiary Campaign against Japan (1988), Japanese viewpoint
- Hansen, Randall. Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942–1945 (2009), says AAF was more effective than RAF
- Hastings, Max. Bomber Command (1979)
- Haulman, Daniel L. Hitting Home: The Air Offensive Against Japan, (1998) online edition
- Hecks, Karl. Bombing 1939–45: The Air Offensive Against Land Targets in World War Two (1990)
- Jablonsky, Edward. Flying Fortress (1965)
- Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II (1989), reprint of 1945 edition
- Johnsen, Frederick A. B-17 Flying Fortress: The Symbol of Second World War Air Power (2000) excerpt
- MacIsaac, David, ed. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (10 v, 1976) reprints of some reports
- Madej, Victor. ed. German war economy: the motorization myth (1984) (based on v. 64a, 77, and 113 of the U.S. Strategic Bombing reports on oil and chemical industry.)
- Madej, Victor. ed. The War machine: German weapons and manpower, 1939–1945 (1984)
- Middlebrook, Martin. The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission: American Raids on 17 August 1943 (1983)
- Mierzejewski, Alfred C. The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944–1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway (1988)
- Pape, Robert A. Punishment and Denial: The Coercive Use of Air Power (1995)
- Ralph, William W. "Improvised Destruction: Arnold, LeMay, and the Firebombing of Japan," War in History, Vol. 13, No. 4, 495–522 (2006) online at Sage
- Read, Anthony, and David Fisher. The Fall of Berlin (1993)
- Searle, Thomas R. "'It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers': The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945" The Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 103–133 in JSTOR
- United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The Campaigns of the Pacific War. (1946) Online edition
- United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Summary Report: (European War) (1945) online edition key primary source
- United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Summary Report: (Pacific War) (1946) online edition key primary source
- Westermann, Edward B. Flak: German Anti-Aircraft defences, 1914–1945 (2005)
External links
- Air Force official histories (mostly pamphlets)
- "The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia" compiled by Kent G. Budge, 4000 short articles
Air warfare was a major component in all theaters of World War II and together with anti aircraft warfare consumed a large fraction of the industrial output of the major powers Germany and Japan depended on air forces that were closely integrated with land and naval forces the Axis powers downplayed the advantage of fleets of strategic bombers and were late in appreciating the need to defend against Allied strategic bombing By contrast Britain and the United States took an approach that greatly emphasized strategic bombing and to a lesser degree tactical control of the battlefield by air as well as adequate air defenses Both Britain and the U S built substantially larger strategic forces of large long range bombers Simultaneously they built tactical air forces that could win air superiority over the battlefields thereby giving vital assistance to ground troops The U S Navy and Royal Navy also built a powerful naval air component based on aircraft carriers as did the Imperial Japanese Navy these played the central role in the war at sea Boeing B 29 Superfortress long range strategic bombers releasing their payloads during the Burma campaign in 1945 The B 29 was the largest aircraft to have a significant operational role in World War II and remains the only aircraft in history to have ever used a nuclear weapon in combat Pre war planningBefore 1939 one side japan operated under largely theoretical models of air warfare Italian theorist Giulio Douhet in the 1920s summarised the faith that airmen during and after World War I developed in the efficacy of strategic bombing Many said it alone could win wars as the bomber will always get through The Americans were confident that the Boeing B 17 Flying Fortress bomber could reach targets protected by its own weapons and bomb using the Norden bombsight with pickle barrel accuracy Japanese aviation pioneers felt that they had developed the finest naval aviators in the world Air forcesGermany Luftwaffe A Messerschmitt Bf 109 escorting a Junkers Ju 87 of the Luftwaffe in 1941 The Luftwaffe was the aerial warfare branch of the Wehrmacht Under the leadership of Hermann Goring it was able to learn and test new combat techniques in the Spanish Civil War The war also led to greater emphasis on anti air weapons and fighter aircraft due to their ability to defend against enemy bombers Its advanced technology and rapid growth led to exaggerated fears in the 1930s that helped to persuade the British and French into appeasement In the war the Luftwaffe performed well in 1939 41 as its Stuka dive bombers terrified enemy infantry units But the Luftwaffe was poorly coordinated with overall German strategy and never ramped up to the size and scope needed in a total war partly due to a lack of military aircraft production infrastructure for both completed airframes and powerplants when compared to either the Soviet Union or the United States The Luftwaffe was deficient in radar technology except for their usable UHF and later VHF band airborne intercept radar designs such as the Lichtenstein and Neptun radar systems for their night fighters The Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter did not enter service until July 1944 and the lightweight Heinkel He 162 appeared only during the last months of the air war in Europe The Luftwaffe could not deal with Britain s increasingly lethal defensive fighter screen after the Battle of Britain or the faster P 51 Mustang escort fighters after 1943 When the Luftwaffe s fuel supply ran dry in 1944 due to the oil campaign of World War II it was reduced to anti aircraft flak roles and many of its men were sent to infantry units By 1944 it operated 39 000 flak batteries staffed with a million people in uniform both men and women The Luftwaffe lacked the bomber forces for strategic bombing because it did not think such bombing was worthwhile especially following the June 3 1936 death of General Walther Wever the prime proponent of a strategic bomber force for the Luftwaffe They did attempt some strategic bombing in the east with the problematic Heinkel He 177A Their one success was destroying an airbase at Poltava Air Base Ukraine during the Allied Operation Frantic which housed 43 new B 17 bombers and a million tons of aviation fuel Introduction of turbojet powered combat aircraft mostly with the Messerschmitt Me 262 twin jet fighter the Heinkel He 162 light jet fighter and the Arado Ar 234 reconnaissance bomber was pioneered by the Luftwaffe but the delayed period 1944 45 of their introduction much of which was due to the lengthy development time for both the BMW 003 and Junkers Jumo 004 jet engine designs as well as the failure to produce usable examples of their two long developed higher power aviation engines the Junkers Jumo 222 multibank 24 cylinder piston engine of some 2 500 hp and the advanced Heinkel HeS 011 turbojet of nearly 2 800 lb of thrust each of which were meant to power many advanced German airframe design proposals in the last years of the war meant that they were introduced too little too late as so many other advanced German aircraft designs and indeed many other German military weapon systems had been during the later war years Although Germany s allies especially Italy and Finland had air forces of their own there was very little coordination with them Not until very late in the war did Germany share its aircraft and alternative fuel blueprints and technology with its ally Japan resulting in the Nakajima Kikka jet fighter and the Mitsubishi Shusui rocket fighter respectively based on the Me 262A and Me 163B both of which similarly came far too late for Japan to improve its defensive aircraft systems or to make alternative fuels and lubricants Britain Royal Air Force Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires of the RAF flying in formation in 1940 The British had their own very well developed theory of strategic bombing and built the long range bombers to implement it Once it became clear that Germany was a threat the RAF started on a large expansion with many airfields being set up and the number of squadrons increased From 42 squadrons with 800 aircraft in 1934 the RAF had reached 157 squadrons and 3 700 aircraft by 1939 They combined the newly developed radar with communications centres to direct their fighter defences Their medium bombers were capable of reaching the German industrial centre of the Ruhr and larger bombers were under development Aviation goggles and flying helmet used by famous RAF pilot Billy Strachan 1921 1998 The RAF underwent rapid expansion following the outbreak of war against Germany in 1939 This included the training in other Commonwealth nations particularly Canada of half of British and Commonwealth aircrews some 167 000 men in all It was the second largest in Europe The RAF also integrated Polish and other airmen who had escaped from Hitler s Europe In Europe the RAF was in operational control of Commonwealth aircrews and Commonwealth squadrons although these retained some degree of independence such as the formation of No 6 Group RCAF to put Canadian squadrons together in a nationally identifiable unit The RAF had three major combat commands based in the United Kingdom RAF Fighter Command charged with defence of the UK RAF Bomber Command formed 1936 which operated the bombers that would be offensive against the enemy and RAF Coastal Command which was to protect Allied shipping and attack enemy shipping The Royal Navy s Fleet Air Arm operated land based fighters in defence of naval establishments and carrier based aircraft Later in the war the RAF s fighter force was divided into two Air Defence of Great Britain ADGB for protecting the UK and the Second Tactical Air Force for ground offensive support in the North West Europe campaign Bomber Command participated in two areas of attack the strategic bombing campaign against German war production and the less well known mining of coastal waters off Germany known as Gardening to contain its naval operations and prevent the U boats from freely operating against Allied shipping In order to attack German industry by night the RAF developed navigational aids tactics to overwhelm the German defences control system tactics directly against German night fighter forces target marking techniques many electronic aids in defence and attack and supporting electronic warfare aircraft The production of heavy aircraft competed with resources for the Army and the Navy and it was a source of disagreement as to whether the effort could be more profitably expended elsewhere Increasingly heavy losses during the latter part of 1943 due to the reorganized Luftwaffe night fighter system Wilde Sau tactics and Sir Arthur Harris costly attempts to destroy Berlin in the winter of 1943 44 led to serious doubts as to whether Bomber Command was being used to its fullest potential In early 1944 the UK air arm was put under Eisenhower s direct control where it played a vital role in preparing the way for the Overlord Invasion Soviet Union Soviet Air Force Ilyushin Il 2s of the Soviet Air Forces near Moscow in 1943 By the end of the war Soviet annual aircraft production had risen sharply with annual Soviet production peaking at 40 000 aircraft in 1944 Some 157 000 aircraft were produced of which 126 000 were combat types for the Voyenno Vozdushnye Sily Voenno Vozdushnye Sily lit Military Aerial Forces or VVS while the others were transports trainers and other auxiliary aircraft The critical importance of the ground attack role in defending the Soviet Union from the Axis Operation Barbarossa through to the final defeat of Nazi Germany with the Battle of Berlin resulted in the Soviet military aviation industry creating more examples of the Ilyushin Il 2 Shturmovik during the war than any other military aircraft design in aviation history with just over 36 000 examples produced During the war the Soviets employed 7500 bombers to drop 30 million bombs on German targets with a density that sometimes reached 100 150 tons sq kilometer United States Army Air Forces A Consolidated Liberator I flying over Curtiss P 40 Warhawks of the U S Army Air Forces in 1943 Before the attack on Pearl Harbor and during the period within which the predecessor U S Army Air Corps became the Army Air Forces in late June 1941 President Franklin D Roosevelt gave command of the Navy to an aviator Admiral Ernest King with a mandate for an aviation oriented war in the Pacific FDR allowed King to build up land based naval and Marine aviation and seize control of the long range bombers used in antisubmarine patrols in the Atlantic Roosevelt basically agreed with Robert A Lovett the civilian Assistant Secretary of War for Air who argued While I don t go so far as to claim that air power alone will win the war I do claim the war will not be won without it Army Chief of Staff George C Marshall rejected calls for complete independence for the Air Corps because the land forces generals and the Navy were vehemently opposed In the compromise that was reached it was understood that after the war the aviators would get their independence Meanwhile the Air Corps became the Army Air Forces AAF in June 1941 combining all their personnel and units under a single commanding general an airman In 1942 the Army reorganized into three equal components one of which was the AAF which then had almost complete freedom in terms of internal administration Thus the AAF set up its own medical service independent of the Surgeon General its own WAC units and its own logistics system It had full control over the design and procurement of airplanes and related electronic gear and ordnance Its purchasing agents controlled 15 of the nation s Gross National Product Together with naval aviation it recruited the best young men in the nation General Henry H Arnold headed the AAF One of the first military men to fly and the youngest colonel in World War I he selected for the most important combat commands men who were ten years younger than their Army counterparts including Ira Eaker b 1896 Jimmy Doolittle b 1896 Hoyt Vandenberg b 1899 Elwood Pete Queseda b 1904 and youngest of them all Curtis LeMay b 1906 Although a West Pointer himself Arnold did not automatically turn to Academy men for top positions Since he operated independent of theatre commanders Arnold could and did move his generals around and speedily removed underachievers Aware of the need for engineering expertise Arnold went outside the military and formed close liaisons with top engineers like rocket specialist Theodore von Karmen at Caltech Arnold was given seats on the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US British Combined Chiefs of Staff Arnold however was officially Deputy Chief of Army Staff so on committees he deferred to his boss General Marshall Thus Marshall made all the basic strategic decisions which were worked out by his War Plans Division WPD later renamed the Operations Division WPD s section leaders were infantrymen or engineers with a handful of aviators in token positions The AAF had a newly created planning division whose advice was largely ignored by WPD Airmen were also underrepresented in the planning divisions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Combined Chiefs Aviators were largely shut out of the decision making and planning process because they lacked seniority in a highly rank conscious system The freeze intensified demands for independence and fueled a spirit of proving the superiority of air power doctrine Because of the young pragmatic leadership at the top and the universal glamor accorded aviators morale in the AAF was strikingly higher than anywhere else except perhaps Navy aviation The AAF provided extensive technical training promoted officers and enlisted faster provided comfortable barracks and good food and was safe with an American government sponsored pilot training program in place as far back as 1938 that did work in concert when necessary with the British Commonwealth s similar program within North America The only dangerous jobs were voluntary ones as crew of fighters and bombers or involuntary ones at jungle bases in the Southwest Pacific Marshall an infantryman uninterested in aviation before 1939 became a partial convert to air power and allowed the aviators more autonomy He authorized vast spending on planes and insisted that American forces had to have air supremacy before taking the offensive However he repeatedly overruled Arnold by agreeing with Roosevelt s requests in 1941 42 to send half of the new light bombers and fighters to the British and Soviets thereby delaying the buildup of American air power The Army s major theatre commands were given to infantrymen Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D Eisenhower Neither had paid much attention to aviation before the war However the air power advocate Jimmy Doolittle succeeded Eaker as 8th Air Force commander at the start of 1944 Doolittle instituted a critical change in strategic fighter tactics and the 8th Air Force bomber raids faced less and less Luftwaffe defensive fighter opposition for the rest of the war Offensive counter air to clear the way for strategic bombers and an eventually decisive cross channel invasion was a strategic mission led by escort fighters partnered with heavy bombers The tactical mission however was the province of fighter bombers assisted by light and medium bombers American theatre commanders became air power enthusiasts and built their strategies around the need for tactical air supremacy MacArthur had been badly defeated in the Philippines in 1941 42 primarily because the Japanese controlled the sky His planes were outnumbered and outclassed his airfields shot up his radar destroyed and his supply lines cut His infantry never had a chance MacArthur vowed never again His island hopping campaign was based on the strategy of isolating Japanese strongholds while leaping past them Each leap was determined by the range of his 5th Air Force and the first task on securing an objective was to build an airfield to prepare for the next leap Eisenhower s deputy at SHAEF was Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder who had been commander of the Allied Mediterranean Air Command when Eisenhower was in charge of Allied operations in the Mediterranean Doctrine and technologyThe Allies won battlefield air supremacy in the Pacific in 1943 and in Europe in 1944 That meant that Allied supplies and reinforcements would get through to the battlefront but not the enemy s It meant the Allies could concentrate their strike forces wherever they pleased and overwhelm the enemy with a preponderance of firepower There was a specific campaign within the overall strategic offensive for suppression of enemy air defences or specifically Luftwaffe fighters Aircrew training CAC Wackett trainers of the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942 While the Japanese began the war with a superb set of naval aviators trained at the Misty Lagoon experimental air station their practice perhaps from the warrior tradition was to keep the pilots in action until they died The U S position at least for naval aviation was a strict rotation between sea deployments and shore duty the latter including training replacements personal training and participating in doctrinal development The U S strategic bombing campaign against Europe did this in principle but relatively few crews survived the 25 missions of a rotation On December 27 1938 the United States had initiated the Civilian Pilot Training Program to vastly increase the number of ostensibly civilian American pilots but this program also had the eventual effect of providing a large flight ready force of trained pilots for future military action if the need arose Other countries had other variants In some countries it seemed to be a matter of personal choice if one stayed in combat or helped build the next generation Even where there was a policy of using skills outside combat some individuals e g Guy Gibson VC insisted on returning to combat after a year Both Gibson s successors at 617 Squadron were ordered off ops permanently Leonard Cheshire VC after 102 operations Willie Tait DSO amp 3 Bars after 101 reflecting the strain of prolonged operations The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and related schemes as well as training British crew in North America away from the war contributed large numbers of aircrew from outside the UK to the forces under RAF operational control The resulting Article XV squadrons nominally part of individual Commonwealth air forces were filled from a pool of mixed nationalities While RAF Bomber Command let individuals form teams naturally and bomber aircrew were generally heterogeneous in origins the Canadian government pushed for its bomber aircrew to be organised in one Group for greater recognition No 6 Group RCAF Logistics Airfield construction RAF construction workers finishing the construction of an airfield near Lingevres in 1944 Arnold correctly anticipated that the U S would have to build forward airfields in inhospitable places Working closely with the Army Corps of Engineers he created Aviation Engineer Battalions that by 1945 included 118 000 men Runways hangars radar stations power generators barracks gasoline storage tanks and ordnance dumps had to be built hurriedly on tiny coral islands mud flats featureless deserts dense jungles or exposed locations still under enemy artillery fire The heavy construction gear had to be imported along with the engineers blueprints steel mesh landing mats prefabricated hangars aviation fuel bombs and ammunition and all necessary supplies As soon as one project was finished the battalion would load up its gear and move forward to the next challenge while headquarters inked in a new airfield on the maps The engineers opened an entirely new airfield in North Africa every other day for seven straight months Once when heavy rains along the coast reduced the capacity of old airfields two companies of Airborne Engineers loaded miniaturized gear into 56 transports flew a thousand miles to a dry Sahara location started blasting away and were ready for the first B 17 24 hours later Often engineers had to repair and use a captured enemy airfield The German fields were well built all weather operations Some of the Japanese island bases built before the war had excellent airfields Most new Japanese installations in the Pacific were ramshackle affairs with poor siting poor drainage scant protection and narrow bumpy runways Engineering was a low priority for the offense minded Japanese who chronically lacked adequate equipment and imagination On a few islands local commanders did improve aircraft shelters and general survivability as they correctly perceived the danger of coming raids or invasions In the same theatre the United States Navy s own construction battalions collectively named the Seabees from the CB acronym adopted on the date of their formation in March 1942 would build over a hundred military airstrips and a significant degree of the military support infrastructure supplying the Pacific island hopping campaign of the Allies during the Pacific war through 1945 as well as elsewhere in the world during the war years Tactical Tactical air power involves gaining control of the airspace over the battlefield directly supporting ground units as by attacks on enemy tanks and artillery and attacking enemy supply lines and airfields Typically fighter planes are used to gain air supremacy and light bombers are used for support missions Air supremacy Gun camera photos of a Hawker Typhoon shooting down a Focke Wulf Fw 190 in 1943 Tactical air doctrine stated that the primary mission was to turn tactical superiority into complete air supremacy to totally defeat the enemy air force and obtain control of its air space This could be done directly through dogfights and raids on airfields and radar stations or indirectly by destroying aircraft factories and fuel supplies Anti aircraft artillery called ack ack by the British flak by the Germans and Archie by the World War I USAAS could also play a role but it was downgraded by most airmen The Allies won air supremacy in the Pacific in 1943 and in Europe in 1944 That meant that Allied supplies and reinforcements would get through to the battlefront but not the enemy s It meant the Allies could concentrate their strike forces wherever they pleased and overwhelm the enemy with a preponderance of firepower This was the basic Allied strategy and it worked P 51 Mustangs of the 375th Fighter Squadron Eighth Air Force mid 1944 One of the most effective demonstrations of air supremacy by the Western Allies over Europe occurred in early 1944 when Lieutenant General Jimmy Doolittle who took command of the US 8th Air Force in January 1944 only a few months later released the building force of P 51 Mustangs from their intended mission to closely escort the 8th Air Force s heavy bombers after getting help from British aviators in selecting the best available aircraft types for the task The USAAF s Mustang squadrons were then tasked to fly well ahead of the bombers combat box defensive formations by some 75 100 miles 120 160 km to basically clear the skies in the manner of a sizable fighter sweep air supremacy mission of any defensive presence over the Third Reich of the Luftwaffe s Jagdgeschwader single seat fighter wings This important change of strategy also coincidentally doomed both the twin engined Zerstorer heavy fighters and their replacement heavily armed Focke Wulf Fw 190A Sturmbock forces used as bomber destroyers each in their turn This change in American fighter tactics began to have its most immediate effect with the loss of more and more of the Luftwaffe s Jagdflieger fighter pilot personnel and fewer bomber losses to the Luftwaffe as 1944 wore on Air superiority depended on having the fastest most maneuverable fighters in sufficient quantity based on well supplied airfields within range The RAF demonstrated the importance of speed and maneuverability in the Battle of Britain 1940 when its fast Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane fighters easily riddled the clumsy Stukas as they were pulling out of dives The race to build the fastest fighter became one of the central themes of World War II Once total air supremacy in a theatre was gained the second mission was interdiction of the flow of enemy supplies and reinforcements in a zone five to fifty miles behind the front Whatever moved had to be exposed to air strikes or else confined to moonless nights Radar was not good enough for nighttime tactical operations against ground targets A large fraction of tactical air power focused on this mission Close air support A gun camera photo of a Wehrmacht convoy being strafed by a Balkan Air Force P 51 Mustang in 1945 The third and lowest priority from the AAF viewpoint mission was close air support or direct assistance to ground units on the battlefront which consisted of bombing targets identified by ground forces and strafing exposed infantry Airmen disliked the mission because it subordinated the air war to the ground war furthermore slit trenches camouflage and flak guns usually reduced the effectiveness of close air support Operation Cobra in July 1944 targeted a critical strip of 3 000 acres 1 214 ha of German strength that held up the US breakthrough out of Normandy General Omar Bradley his ground forces stymied placed his bets on air power 1 500 heavies 380 medium bombers and 550 fighter bombers dropped 4 000 tons of high explosives Bradley was horrified when 77 planes dropped their payloads short of the intended target The ground belched shook and spewed dirt to the sky Scores of our troops were hit their bodies flung from slit trenches Doughboys were dazed and frightened A bomb landed squarely on McNair in a slit trench and threw his body sixty feet and mangled it beyond recognition except for the three stars on his collar The Germans were stunned senseless with tanks overturned telephone wires severed commanders missing and a third of their combat troops killed or wounded The defence line broke J Lawton Collins rushed his VII Corps forward the Germans retreated in a rout the Battle of France was won air power seemed invincible However the sight of a senior colleague killed by error was unnerving and after the completion of operation Cobra Army generals were so reluctant to risk friendly fire casualties that they often passed over excellent attack opportunities that would be possible only with air support Infantrymen on the other hand were ecstatic about the effectiveness of close air support Air strikes on the way we watch from a top window as P 47s dip in and out of clouds through suddenly erupting strings of Christmas tree lights flak before one speck turns over and drops toward earth in the damnest sight of the Second World War the dive bomber attack the speck snarling screaming dropping faster than a stone until it s clearly doomed to smash into the earth then past the limits of belief an impossible flattening beyond houses and trees an upward arch that makes the eyes hurt and as the speck hurtles away WHOOM the earth erupts five hundred feet up in swirling black smoke More specks snarl dive scream two squadrons eight of them leaving congealing combining whirling pillars of black smoke lifting trees houses vehicles and we devoutly hope bits of Germans We yell and pound each other s backs Gods from the clouds this is how you do it You don t attack painfully across frozen plains you simply drop in on the enemy and blow them out of existence Some forces especially the United States Marine Corps emphasized the air ground team The airmen in this approach also are infantrymen who understand the needs and perspective of the ground forces There was much more joint air ground training and a given air unit might have a long term relationship with a given ground unit improving their mutual communications In North West Europe the Allies used the taxi rank or Cab rank system for supporting the ground assault Fighter bombers such as the Hawker Typhoon or P 47 Thunderbolt armed with cannon bombs and rockets would be in the air at 10 000 ft over the battlefield When support was required it could be quickly summoned by a ground observer While often too inaccurate against armoured vehicles rockets had a psychological effect on troops and were effective against the supply carrying trucks used to support German tanks Pioneering use of precision guided munitions A German Fritz X glide bombAn American Bat anti ship glide bomb with its development teamRear view of an Azon MCLOS guided bomb showing details Both the Luftwaffe and USAAF pioneered the use of what would come to be known as precision guided munitions during World War II The Luftwaffe was the first to use such weapons with the Fritz X armor piercing anti ship glide bomb on September 9 1943 against the Italian battleship Roma III Gruppe KG 100 s Dornier Do 217 medium bombers achieved two hits exploding her powder magazines and sinking her Both the Fritz X and the unarmored rocket boosted Henschel Hs 293 guided glide bomb were used successfully against Allied shipping during the Allied invasion of Italy following Italy s capitulation to the Allies earlier in September 1943 Both weapons used the Kehl Strasbourg radio control link a joystick equipped Funkgerat FuG 203 Kehl transmitter in a deploying aircraft with the corresponding FuG 230 Strassburg receiver in the ordnance for guidance The United States Army Air Forces had come up with the Azon guided bomb converted from a regular 453 kg 1 000 lb high explosive bomb with a special set of radio controlled vertical tailfins controlling the lateral path to the target Missions were flown in both Western Europe in the summer and autumn of 1944 and in the China Burma India theatre in early 1945 with two separate B 24 Liberator squadrons one in each theatre having some limited success with the device The U S Navy s Bat unpowered anti ship ordnance was based around the same half ton HE bomb as the Azon but with the same bomb contained within a much more aerodynamic airframe and used a fully autonomous onboard radar guidance system to control its flightpath rather than an external source of control for the Azon German bombers and missilesBritain and the United States built large quantities of four engined long range heavy bombers Germany Japan and the Soviet Union did not The decision was made in 1933 by the German general staff the technical staff and the aviation industry that there was a lack of sufficient labor capital and raw materials A top level Luftwaffe general Walther Wever had tried to make some form of strategic bombing capability a priority for the newly formed Luftwaffe through 1935 and into 1936 but his untimely death in June 1936 ended any hopes of developing such a force of long range heavies possible as his Ural bomber program for such four engined aircraft comparable to what the United States was already pioneering literally died with him During the war Hitler was insistent on bombers having tactical capability which at the time meant dive bombing a maneuver then impossible for any heavy bomber His aircraft had limited effect on Britain for a variety of reasons but low payload was among them Lacking a doctrine of strategic bombing neither the RLM or the Luftwaffe ever ordered any suitable quantities of an appropriate heavy bomber from the German aviation industry having only the Heinkel He 177A Greif available for such duties a design plagued with many technical problems including an unending series of engine fires with just under 1 200 examples ever being built Early in the war the Luftwaffe had excellent tactical aviation but when it faced Britain s integrated air defence system the medium bombers actually designed produced and deployed to combat meant to include the Schnellbomber high speed mediums and their intended heavier warload successors the Bomber B design competition competitors did not have the numbers or bomb load to do major damage of the sort the RAF and USAAF inflicted on German cities Failure of German secret weapons Hitler believed that new high technology secret weapons would give Germany a strategic bombing capability and turn the war around The first of 9 300 V 1 flying bombs hit London in mid June 1944 and together with 1 300 V 2 rockets caused 8 000 civilian deaths and 23 000 injuries Although they did not seriously undercut British morale or munitions production they bothered the British government a great deal Germany now had its own unanswered weapons system Using proximity fuzes British anti aircraft artillery gunners learned how to shoot down the 400 mph V 1s nothing could stop the supersonic V 2s The British government in near panic demanded that upwards of 40 of bomber sorties be targeted against the launch sites and got its way in Operation Crossbow The attacks were futile and the diversion represented a major success for Hitler Every raid against a V 1 or V 2 launch site was one less raid against the Third Reich On the whole however the secret weapons were still another case of too little too late The Luftwaffe ran the V 1 program which used a jet engine but it diverted scarce engineering talent and manufacturing capacity that were urgently needed to improve German radar air defence and jet fighters The German Army ran the V 2 program The rockets were a technological triumph and bothered the British leadership even more than the V 1s But they were so inaccurate they rarely could hit militarily significant targets Second Sino Japanese WarChina 1937 1944 The airwar over China were the largest air battles fought since the Great War involving the first prolonged and massed deployments of aircraft carriers in support of expeditionary forces extensive close air support and air interdiction strikes significant use of airpower in the attacks against naval assets and much of the technological and operational transitioning from the latest biplane fighter designs to the modern monoplane fighter designs Although largely a forgotten war by Western standards the significance and impact of the airwar between China and the Empire of Japan cannot be denied it was the best opportunity for the Western air powers to learn about the might of Japanese aerial and naval military technological prowess as the West were yet in for a dangerous realization of Japanese air prowess by the end of 1941 when the Empire of Japan expanded into the Pacific As the War of Resistance World War II broke out with the Battle of Shanghai in 1937 the centralized command of the Republic of China Air Force had integrated various former warlord air force men and machines as well as overseas Chinese volunteer aviators into the nominally Nationalist Air Force of China and coordinating with the Second United Front of the National Revolutionary Army NRA and People s Liberation Army PLA engaging in massive air battles close air support operations air interdiction strikes facing indiscriminate terror bombing campaigns against all manners of civilian targets inflicted by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service The Chinese Air Force equipped with a maximum of only about 300 imported operational combat aircraft at any given time was stretched thin over a massive area of the northern eastern and southern fronts against approximately 1 000 operational combat aircraft of the Imperial Japanese forces supported by their own robust and rapidly developing aviation industry Major air battles and skirmishes between the Chinese Air Force and the Japanese Army and Navy air forces continued over a vast range of the Chinese mainland and beyond even after the Battle of Shanghai Battle of Nanking and Battle of Taiyuan were lost by the end of 1937 new frontlines were quickly being drawn at the Battle of Taierzhuang the Battle of Wuhan the Battle of Canton the Battle of South Guangxi Kunlun Pass among very many other engagements through 1938 and into 1939 The Chinese Air Force survived to fight with combat aircraft replenishments from 1937 to 1941 through treaty with the Soviets here a Chinese Polikarpov I 16 fighter preserved at the Datangshan Aviation Museum The Chinese Air Force was initially equipped with a mixed bag of fighter and bomber aircraft at the beginning of the war in 1937 that included the Boeing Model 281 Peashooter Curtiss A 12 Shrikes Curtiss Hawk IIs Hawk IIIs Fiat CR 32s Heinkel He 111s Martin B 10s Northrop Gammas etc and while giving good account in their many missions against the Imperial Japanese onslaught these were mostly lost through continued attrition as the war raged on through the end of 1937 The Chinese Air Force however would continue to fight on for years to come as they were replenished through the Sino Soviet Non Aggression Pact of 1937 and transitioning almost entirely into Soviet made Polikarpov I 15 I 153 and I 16 fighters as well as Tupolev SB 2 and TB 3 bombers by 1938 Fighting capacity was greatly bolstered with support from the aviators of the Soviet Volunteer Group which was active from late 1937 until the end of 1939 and remained stationed in China at limited capacity until December 1940 The Chinese would remain with these increasingly obsolescent aircraft as the Japanese made tremendous advancements in aircraft and engine technologies Air war stalemate at the national fortress of Chongqing With the fall of Wuhan Hubei province to the Japanese the wartime capital of China had been pushed back to Chongqing where an all air war campaign against targets in Sichuan province between the CAF and the IJAAF IJNAF would rage for years in a cat and mouse game under the codenames Operation 100 101 and 102 IJA IJN joint strike force terror bombing campaigns Despite the general obsolescence of the Chinese fighter aircraft against the new Japanese Schnellbombers the CAF improvised continuing to inflict casualties and losses against the Japanese raiders culminating with the well timed deployment of experimental air burst bombs launched against the massive heavy bomber formations in August 1940 and climaxing with the introduction of the most advanced fighter aircraft of the time the Mitsubishi A6M Zero which gained almost complete air supremacy with its unheard of performance against the Chinese Air Force the following month and would incredibly remain largely unheard of almost a year and a half later when the allied air powers faced the scourge of the Zero fighter as the Imperial Japanese war machine expanded into the Pacific with the attack on Pearl Harbor Xu Jixiang of the 17th PS 5th PG with an I 15bis the fighter he fought in the A6M Zero fighter s debut aerial combat engagement on 13 September 1940 over Chongqing In 1940 41 well before Pearl Harbor the United States decided on an aggressive air campaign against Japan using Chinese bases and American pilots wearing Chinese uniforms The United States created funded and provided crews and equipment for an American Volunteer Group of combat aviators commonly referred to as the Flying Tigers a nominally Chinese Air Force unit composed almost entirely of Americans led by General Claire Lee Chennault Tasked with the defense of The Hump supply lifeline between the British bases in Burma Myanmar and India and the wartime port of entry into China Kunming city the Flying Tigers employed dissimilar hit and run air tactics using the heavy firepower and high speed diving of the well armored P 40 Warhawk fighter attack planes racking up a strong record against the Japanese Army Air Force operating in the CBI theater of operations beginning in December 1941 Chennault called for strategic bombing against Japanese cities using American bombers based in China The plan was approved by Roosevelt and top policy makers in Washington and equipment was on the way in December 1941 It proved to be futile American strategic bombing of Japan from Chinese bases began in 1944 including the firebombing of Wuhan using Boeing B 29 Superfortress under the command of General Curtis Lemay but the distances and the logistics made an effective campaign impossible Pacific air warCarrier warfare in Pacific Dec 1941 Mar 1942 Japan did not have a separate air force Its aviation units were integrated into the Army and Navy which were not well coordinated with each other Japanese military aircraft production during World War II produced 76 000 warplanes of which 30 000 were fighters and 15 000 were light bombers Japanese air war 1941 42 Washington tried to deter Japanese entry into the war by threatening the firebombing of Japanese cities using B 17 strategic bombers based in the Philippines The US sent too little too late as the Japanese easily overwhelmed the American Far Eastern Air Force the day after Pearl Harbor Japanese naval air power proved unexpectedly powerful sinking the American battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 then raging widely across the Pacific and Indian oceans to defeat elements of the British American Dutch and Australian forces Land based airpower coordinated efficiently with land forces enabled Japan to overrun Malaya Singapore and the Philippines by spring 1942 The Doolittle Raid used 16 B 25 bombers taking off from aircraft carriers to bomb Tokyo in April 1942 Little physical damage was done but the episode shocked and stunned the Japanese people and leadership 1942 Japanese warplanes bombing the Dutch light cruiser HNLMS Java during the Battle of Java Sea At the Battle of the Java Sea February 27 1942 the Japanese Navy destroyed the main ABDA American British Dutch and Australian naval force The Netherlands East Indies campaign resulted in the surrender of Allied forces on Java Meanwhile Japanese aircraft had all but eliminated Allied air power in South East Asia and began attacking Australia with a major raid on Darwin February 19 A raid by a powerful Japanese Navy aircraft carrier force into the Indian Ocean resulted in the Battle of Ceylon and sinking of a British carrier HMS Hermes as well as two cruisers and other ships effectively driving the British fleet out of the Indian Ocean and paving the way for Japanese conquest of Burma and a drive towards India The Japanese seemed unstoppable However the Doolittle Raid caused an uproar in the Japanese Army and Navy commands they had both lost face in letting the Emperor be threatened As a consequence the Army relocated overseas fighter groups to Japan groups needed elsewhere Even more significantly the Naval command believed it had to extend its eastern defence perimeter and they focused on Midway as the next base Coral Sea and Midway By mid 1942 the Japanese Combined Fleet found itself holding a vast area even though it lacked the aircraft carriers aircraft and aircrew to defend it and the freighters tankers and destroyers necessary to sustain it Moreover Fleet doctrine was incompetent to execute the proposed barrier defense Instead they decided on additional attacks in both the south and central Pacific In the Battle of the Coral Sea fought between May 4 8 1942 off the coast of Australia the opposing fleets never saw one another it was an air exchange While the Americans had greater losses and arguably a tactical loss having lost a fleet carrier while sinking a Japanese light carrier they gained a strategic victory as Japan cancelled a planned offensive Most critically the damage to one of the Japanese fleet carriers and the other carrier s airgroup would leave both carriers out of the Battle of Midway preventing them from them bringing their 144 aircraft at full strength to supplement the Japanese carrier force This would allow the American forces to be at near parity temporarily setting the stage for the turning point of the Pacific War In the Battle of Midway the Japanese split a portion of their fleet toward the Aleutians in a simultaneous operation as well as separating the majority of its surface force from the Japanese carriers The Americans on the other hand had received critical details of the Midway operation due to a cryptographic breakthrough which included dates and a complete order of battle As such American forces were able to ambush the Japanese carriers On the other hand the Japanese expected American carriers to sail from Pearl Harbor after Midway had been attacked the unexpected presence of American carriers would lead to the early tactical mistakes the Japanese commander would make Japan had 272 warplanes operating from four carriers the U S Navy carriers had 233 aircraft but there were also another 115 AAF and Marine land based aircraft on Midway itself Due to tactical errors by the Japanese commander and the lucky breaks in executing the decisive American attack in addition to the skill of the American aviators and commanders the Japanese lost three of their four carriers early in the battle The decisive attack was two simultaneous unplanned dive bomber attacks arriving after approximately ninety minutes of constant harassment from various American land and naval air squadrons This harassment had left the Japanese combat air patrol out of position especially as the combat air patrol was focused on an on going torpedo bomber attack The harassment had also prevented the Japanese carriers from launching a strike on the American carriers and the three Japanese carriers were sunk having only made one ineffective attack against Midway itself The final fourth carrier would be sunk by the end of the day The fourth carrier however managed to cripple one American carrier which would later be sunk by a submarine Having lost all their carriers the Japanese were forced to retreat unable to use the rest of their surface fleet including the battleships without air cover Having lost all but two of their fleet carriers the ones damaged at Coral Sea the Japanese never again launched a major effective offensive in the Pacific The successes of the Japanese naval air arm having won stunning victories for the Japanese navy in the first half of 1942 came to a sharp stop after the Battle of Midway Guadalcanal The Japanese had built a major air base on the island of Rabaul but had difficulty keeping it supplied American naval and Marine aviation made Rabaul a frequent bombing target Cactus Air Force warplanes on Henderson Field Guadalcanal in October 1942 A Japanese airfield was spotted under construction at Guadalcanal The Americans made an amphibious landing in August 1942 to seize it sent in the Cactus Air Force and started to reverse the tide of Japanese conquests As a result Japanese and Allied forces both occupied various parts of Guadalcanal Over the following six months both sides fed resources into an escalating battle of attrition on the island at sea and in the sky with eventual victory going to the Americans in February 1943 It was a campaign the Japanese could ill afford A majority of Japanese aircraft from the entire South Pacific area was drained into the Japanese defence of Guadalcanal Japanese logistics as happened time and again failed only 20 of the supplies dispatched from Rabaul to Guadalcanal ever reached there 1943 1945 After 1942 the United States made a massive effort to build up its aviation forces in the Pacific and began island hopping to push its airfields closer and closer to Tokyo Meanwhile the Japanese were unable to upgrade their aircraft and they fell further and further behind in numbers of aircraft carriers The forward island bases were very hard to supply often only submarines could get through and the Japanese forces worked without replacements or rest and often with inadequate food and medicine Their morale and performance steadily declined Starvation became an issue in many bases The American airmen were well fed and well supplied but they were not rotated and faced increasingly severe stress that caused their performance to deteriorate They flew far more often in the Southwest Pacific than in Europe and although rest time in Australia was scheduled there was no fixed number of missions that would produce transfer back to the States Coupled with the monotonous hot disease ridden environment the result was bad morale that jaded veterans quickly passed along to newcomers After a few months epidemics of combat fatigue would drastically reduce the efficiency of units The men who had been at jungle airfields longest the flight surgeons reported were in the worst shape Many have chronic dysentery or other disease and almost all show chronic fatigue states They appear listless unkempt careless and apathetic with almost masklike facial expression Speech is slow thought content is poor they complain of chronic headaches insomnia memory defect feel forgotten worry about themselves are afraid of new assignments have no sense of responsibility and are hopeless about the future Strategic bombing of Japan The flammability of Japan s large cities and the concentration of munitions production there made strategic bombing the preferred strategy of the Americans The first efforts were made from bases in China Massive efforts costing 4 5 billion to establish B 29 bases there had failed when in 1944 the Japanese Army simply moved overland and captured them The Marianas especially the islands of Saipan and Tinian captured in June 1944 gave a close secure base for the very long range B 29 The Superfortress the B 29 represented the highest achievement of traditional pre jet aeronautics Its four 2 200 horsepower Wright R 3350 supercharged engines could lift four tons of bombs 3 500 miles at 33 000 feet high above Japanese flak or fighters Computerized fire control mechanisms made its 13 guns exceptionally lethal against fighters However the systematic raids that began in June 1944 were unsatisfactory because the AAF had learned too much in Europe it overemphasised self defence Arnold in personal charge of the campaign bypassing the theatre commanders brought in a new leader General Curtis LeMay In early 1945 LeMay ordered a radical change in tactics remove the machine guns and gunners fly in low at night Much fuel was used to get to 30 000 feet it could now be replaced with more bombs The Japanese radar fighter and anti aircraft systems were so ineffective that they could not hit the bombers Fires raged through the cities and millions of civilians fled to the mountains Tokyo was hit repeatedly and first suffered a serious blow with the Operation Meetinghouse raid on the night of March 9 10 1945 a conflagration that destroyed nearly 270 000 buildings over a 16 square mile 41 km2 area killing at least 83 000 and estimated by some to be the single most destructive bombing raid in military history On June 5 51 000 buildings in four miles of Kobe were burned out by 473 B 29s Japanese opposition was fierce as 11 B 29s went down and 176 were damaged Osaka where one sixth of the Empire s munitions were made was hit by 1 733 tons of incendiaries dropped by 247 B 29s A firestorm burned out 8 1 square miles including 135 000 houses 4 000 died The Japanese local officials reported Although damage to big factories was slight approximately one fourth of some 4 000 lesser factories which operated hand in hand with the big factories were completely destroyed by fire Moreover owing to the rising fear of air attacks workers in general were reluctant to work in the factories and the attendance fluctuated as much as 50 percent The Japanese army which was not based in the cities was largely undamaged by the raids The Army was short of food and gasoline but as Iwo Jima and Okinawa proved it was capable of ferocious resistance The Japanese also had a new tactic that it hoped would provide the bargaining power to get a satisfactory peace the Kamikaze Kamikaze In late 1944 the Japanese invented an unexpected and highly effective new tactic the Kamikaze suicide plane aimed like a guided missile at American ships Kamikaze means divine wind a reference to the hurricane that sunk an invading Mongol force in 1274 The attacks began in October 1944 and continued to the end of the war Most of the aircraft used in kamikaze attacks were converted obsolete fighters and dive bombers The quality of construction was very poor and many crashed during training or before reaching targets Experienced pilots were used to lead a mission because they could navigate they were not Kamikazes and they returned to base for another mission The Kamikaze pilots were inexperienced and had minimal training however most were well educated and intensely committed to the Emperor A stricken Yokosuka D4Y in a suicide dive against USS Essex in 1944 Kamikaze attacks were highly effective at the Battle of Okinawa in Spring 1945 During the three month battle 4 000 kamikaze sorties sank 38 US ships and damaged 368 more killing 4 900 sailors in the American 5th Fleet Destroyers and destroyer escorts doing radar picket duty were hit hard as the inexperienced pilots dived at the first American ship they spotted instead of waiting to get at the big carriers Task Force 58 analyzed the Japanese technique at Okinawa in April 1945 Rarely have the enemy attacks been so cleverly executed and made with such reckless determination These attacks were generally by single or few aircraft making their approaches with radical changes in course and altitude dispersing when intercepted and using cloud cover to every advantage They tailed our friendlies home used decoy planes and came in at any altitude or on the water The Americans decided their best defense against Kamikazes was to knock them out on the ground or else in the air long before they approached the fleet The Navy called for more fighters and more warning The carriers replaced a fourth of their light bombers with Marine fighters back home the training of fighter pilots was stepped up More combat air patrols circling the big ships more radar picket ships which themselves became prime targets and more attacks on airbases and gasoline supplies eventually worked Japan suspended Kamikaze attacks in May 1945 because it was now hoarding gasoline and hiding planes in preparation for new suicide attacks in case the Allied forces tried to invade their home islands citation needed The Kamikaze strategy allowed the use of untrained pilots and obsolete planes and since evasive maneuvering was dropped and there was no return trip the scarce gasoline reserves could be stretched further Since pilots guided their airplane like a guided missile all the way to the target the proportion of hits was much higher than in ordinary bombing and would eventually see the introduction of a purpose built air launched rocket powered suicide aircraft design in small numbers to accomplish such missions against U S Navy ships Japan s industry was manufacturing 1 500 new planes a month in 1945 citation needed Toward the end of the war the Japanese press encouraged civilians to emulate the kamikaze pilots who willingly gave their lives to stop American naval forces Civilians were told that the reward for such behavior was enshrinement as a warrior god and spiritual protection in the afterlife Expecting increased resistance including far more Kamikaze attacks once the main islands of Japan were invaded the U S high command rethought its strategy and used atomic bombs to end the war hoping it would make a costly invasion unnecessary Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The air attacks on Japan had crippled her ability to wage war but the Japanese had not surrendered On July 26 1945 United States President Harry S Truman United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Government Chiang Kai shek issued the Potsdam Declaration which outlined the terms of surrender for the Empire of Japan as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference This ultimatum stated if Japan did not surrender she would face prompt and utter destruction The Japanese government ignored this ultimatum Mokusatsu kill by silence and vowed to continue resisting an anticipated Allied invasion of Japan On August 6 1945 the Little Boy enriched uranium atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima followed on August 9 by the detonation of the Fat Man plutonium core atomic bomb over Nagasaki Both cities were destroyed with enormous loss of life and psychological shock On August 15 Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan stating Moreover the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable taking the toll of many innocent lives Should We continue to fight it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization Such being the case how are We to save the millions of Our subjects or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers Europe 1939 1941The Luftwaffe gained significant combat experience in the Spanish Civil War where it was used to provide close air support for infantry units The success of the Luftwaffe s Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers in the blitzkriegs that shattered Poland in 1939 and France in 1940 gave Berlin inordinate confidence in its air force Military professionals could not ignore the effectiveness of the Stuka but also observed that France and Poland had minimal effective air defence Outside Britain the idea of an integrated air defence system had not emerged most militaries had a conflict between the advocates of anti aircraft artillery and fighter aircraft for defence not recognizing that they could be complementary when under a common system of command and control a system that had a common operational picture of the battle in progress Invasion of Poland Ju 87 diving procedure Luftwaffe aircraft closely supported the advance of the Army mechanized units most notably with dive bombers but also with light observation aircraft such as Fieseler Storch that rapidly corrected the aim of artillery and gave commanders a literal overview of the battle Allied analysts noted that Poland lacked an effective air defence and was trying to protect too large an area France and the Low Countries Dunkirk German air ground coordination was also evident in the 1940 German campaign in the Low Countries and France The continental air defences were not well organized The Germans deployed among others the tri motor Ju 52 transport for airborne troops in the attack on the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 The first large scale air attack with paratroops in history subsequently occurred during the Battle for The Hague No fewer than 295 Ju 52s were lost in that venture and in other parts of the country due to varying circumstances among which were accurate and effective Dutch anti aircraft defences and German mistakes in using soggy airfields not able to support the heavy aircraft Thus almost an entire year s production was lost in the Netherlands These losses were never surpassed in any air battle in history The lack of sufficient numbers of aircraft most probably heavily influenced the decision not to invade England following the Battle of Britain In total the Germans lost over 2 000 planes in the continuous air war over the Netherlands This high number can also be attributed to the main Allied air lanes into Germany that led directly over the Netherlands Altogether over 5 000 aircraft were lost over the Netherlands Allied and German and over 20 000 crew lost their lives in these mishaps Most of these crew were buried locally so that the Netherlands has some 600 places where Allied and Nazi airmen are buried This makes the country the densest burial place for air crew in all of Europe Losses over the Netherlands 1939 1945Allied German Fighters 1 273 1 175 Bombers2 164 454 Sea planes recce 88 85 Transports 132 286 TOTAL incl misc 3 667 2 017 total 5 684 274 of these on May 10 1940 While German aircraft inflicted heavy losses at the Battle of Dunkirk and soldiers awaiting evacuation while under attack bitterly asked Where was the Royal Air Force the RAF had been operating more effectively than other air defences in the field meeting the German attacks before they reached the battlefield Battle of Britain Air superiority or supremacy was a prerequisite to Operation Sea Lion the planned German invasion of Britain The Luftwaffe s primary task was intended to be the destruction of the Royal Air Force RAF The warplanes on both sides were comparable Germany had more planes but they used much of their fuel getting to Britain and so had more limited time for combat Hawker Hurricane workhorse of the British defence in the Battle of BritainA formation of Heinkel He 111 medium bombers the most numerous German bomber of the Battle of Britain The Luftwaffe used 1 300 medium bombers guarded by 900 fighters they made 1 500 sorties a day from bases in France Belgium and Norway The Germans realized their Ju 87 Stukas and Heinkel He 111s were too vulnerable to modern British fighters The RAF had 650 fighters with more coming out of the factories every day Three main fighter types were involved in the battle the German Messerschmitt Bf 109E and the British Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire The Hurricane accounted for most of the British kills throughout the battle because it made up the majority of the RAF fighter force however its kill loss ratio was inferior to that of its counterpart the Spitfire Of the three aircraft the Hurricane was designed much earlier and was generally considered the least capable Despite the high numbers of Hurricanes in the RAF at that time the Spitfire became synonymous with the Battle of Britain and was somewhat of a symbol of resistance in the minds of the British public through the battle The Bf 109E subtype s short combat radius of 330 km 205 mi due to limited fuel capacity as designed prevented it from adequately escorting the Kampfgeschwader wings medium bombers over England limiting it to only some ten minutes of air combat over the UK before it had turn back for a safe return to northern France this serious deficiency was not corrected until after the major air battles over England through September 1940 had concluded The Royal Air Force also had at its disposal a complex and integrated network of reporting stations and operations control rooms incorporating the new innovation of radar Known as the Dowding system after Hugh Dowding the commander of RAF Fighter Command during the battle and the man who ordered its implementation it was the first integrated air defence system in the world and is often credited with giving the RAF the ability to effectively counter German raids without the need for regular patrols by fighter aircraft increasing the efficiency with which the RAF fighter force could operate As such the Dowding system is also often credited with a significant role in the overall outcome of the battle and comparisons with the air warfare that occurred over France in the spring and early summer of 1940 in which there was no such system and in which the allied air forces were comprehensively defeated seem to support this At first the Germans focused on RAF airfields and radar stations However when the RAF bomber forces quite separate from the fighter forces attacked Berlin Hitler swore revenge and diverted the Luftwaffe to attacks on London Using limited resources to attack civilians instead of airfields and radar proved a major mistake as the civilians being hit were far less critical than the airfields and radar stations that were now ignored London was not a factory city and British aircraft production was not impeded indeed it went up The last German daylight raid came on September 30 the Luftwaffe realized it was taking unacceptable losses and broke off the attack occasional blitz raids hit London and other cities from time In all some 43 000 civilians were killed The Luftwaffe lost 1 411 planes shot down of a grand total of 2 069 which were written off the British lost about the same number but could repair 289 of them The British additionally lost 497 aircraft of Bomber and RAF Coastal Command shot down during that same period and hundreds of planes destroyed on the ground lost by accidents or also written off The successful British defense resulted from a better system that provided more concentration better utilization of radar and better ground control Invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa opened in June 1941 with striking initial German successes In the air many of the Soviets aircraft were inferior while the disparity in pilot quality may have been even greater The purges of military leadership during the Great Terror heavily impacted command and control in all services A destroyed Soviet MiG 3 1941 At the outbreak of the war Soviet Air Forces had just been purged of most of its top officers and was unready By 1945 Soviet annual aircraft production outstripped that of the German Reich 157 000 aircraft were produced In the first few days of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 the Luftwaffe destroyed 2 000 Soviet aircraft most of them on the ground at a loss of only 35 aircraft The main weakness accounting for the heavy aircraft losses in 1941 was the lack of experienced generals pilots and ground support crews the destruction of many aircraft on the runways due to command failure to disperse them and the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht ground troops forcing the Soviet pilots on the defensive during Operation Barbarossa while being confronted with more modern German aircraft The Soviets relied heavily on Ilyushin Il 2 Shturmovik ground assault aircraft the single most produced military aircraft design of all time with some 36 183 examples produced and the Yakovlev Yak 1 fighter the beginning of a family of fighters from Alexander S Yakovlev s design bureau in its many variants during the war years with just over 34 500 Yak 1 Yak 3 Yak 7 and Yak 9 aircraft produced in total each of which became the most produced aircraft series of all time in their respective classes together accounting for about half the strength of the VVS for most of the Great Patriotic War The Yak 1 was a modern 1940 design and had more room for development unlike the relatively mature design of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 itself dating from 1935 The Yak 9 brought the VVS to parity with the Luftwaffe eventually allowing it to gain the upper hand over the Luftwaffe until in 1944 when many Luftwaffe pilots were deliberately avoiding combat citation needed Chief Marshal of Aviation Alexander Novikov led the VVS from 1942 to the end of the war and was credited with introducing several new innovations and weapons systems For the last year of the war German military and civilians retreating towards Berlin were hounded by constant strafing and light bombing In one strategic operation the Yassy Kishinev Strategic Offensive the 5th and 17th Air Armies and the Black Sea Fleet Naval Aviation aircraft achieved a 3 3 1 superiority in aircraft over the Luftflotte 4 and the Royal Romanian Air Force allowing almost complete freedom from air harassment for the ground troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts Irina Sebrova a flight commander in the women s 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment also known as the Night Witches flew 1 008 sorties in the war more than any other member of the regiment As with many Allied countries in World War II the Soviet Union received Western aircraft through Lend Lease mostly Bell P 39 Airacobras Bell P 63 Kingcobras Curtiss P 40 Kittyhawks Douglas A 20 Havocs Hawker Hurricanes and North American B 25 Mitchells Some of these aircraft arrived in the Soviet Union in time to participate in the Battle of Moscow and in particular with the PVO or Soviet Air Defence Forces Soviet fliers in P 39s scored the highest individual kill totals of any ever to fly a U S aircraft Two air regiments were equipped with Spitfire Mk Vbs in early 1943 but immediately experienced unrelenting losses due to friendly fire as the British aircraft looked too much like the German Bf 109 The Soviet Union was then supplied with some 1 200 Spitfire Mk IXs from 1943 Soviet pilots liked them but they did not suit Soviet combat tactics and the rough conditions at the forward airfields close to the front lines Spitfires Mk IXs were therefore assigned to air defense units using the high altitude performance to intercept and pursue German bombers and reconnaissance aircraft By 1944 the Spitfire IX was the main fighter used in this role and would remain so until 1947 Lend Lease aircraft from the U S and UK accounted for nearly 12 of total Soviet air power The Luftwaffe operated from bases in Norway against the convoys to the Soviet Union Long range reconnaissance aircraft circling the convoys out of their anti aircraft artillery range guided in attack aircraft submarines and surface ships North Africa 1940 1943North Africa 1942 43The Anglo American invasion of Vichy French controlled north west Africa was under command of General Dwight D Eisenhower in November 1942 at a time when the Luftwaffe was still strong Air operations were split one force under US control and the other under British control One of Eisenhower s corps commanders General Lloyd Fredendall used his planes as a combat air patrol that circled endlessly over his front lines ready to defend against Luftwaffe attackers Like most infantrymen Fredendall assumed that all assets should be used to assist the ground forces More concerned with defence than attack Fredendall was soon replaced by George Patton Likewise the Luftwaffe made the mistake of dividing up its air assets and failed to gain control of the air or to cut Allied supplies The RAF in North Africa under Air Marshal Arthur Tedder concentrated its air power and defeated the Luftwaffe The RAF had an excellent training program using bases in Canada maintained very high aircrew morale and inculcated a fighting spirit Senior officers monitored battles by radar and directed planes by radio to where they were most needed The RAF s success convinced Eisenhower that its system maximized the effectiveness of tactical air power The point was that air power had to be consolidated at the highest level and had to operate almost autonomously Brigade division and corps commanders lost control of air assets except for a few unarmed little grasshoppers observation aircraft that reported the fall of artillery shells so the gunners could correct their aim With one airman in overall charge air assets could be concentrated for maximum offensive capability not frittered away in ineffective penny packets Eisenhower a tanker in 1918 who had theorized on the best way to concentrate armor recognized the analogy Split up among infantry in supporting roles tanks were wasted concentrated in a powerful force they could dictate the terms of battle The fundamental assumption of air power doctrine was that the air war was just as important as the ground war Indeed the main function of the sea and ground forces insisted the air enthusiasts was to seize forward air bases Field Manual 100 20 issued in July 1943 became the airman s bible for the rest of the war citation needed and taught the doctrine of equality of air and land warfare The idea of combined arms operations air land sea strongly appealed to Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur Eisenhower invaded only after he was certain of air supremacy and he made the establishment of forward air bases his first priority MacArthur s leaps reflected the same doctrine In each theatre the senior ground command post had an attached air command post Requests from the front lines went all the way to the top where the air commander decided whether to act when and how This slowed down response time it might take 48 hours to arrange a strike and involved rejecting numerous requests from the infantry for help or intervention at times citation needed Operations against Allied convoys German air reconnaissance against North Atlantic and Russian convoys increased with CAM ships carrying a single fighter still the main defence The Luftwaffe s first major attack on the convoys began on 25 April 1942 when the 34 ship convoy PQJ6 was attacked PQ17 to Murmansk started with 36 ships only two made it through when the Admiralty falsely thinking Germany was attacking with a battleship ordered the convoy and its escort to scatter There was no battleship but the Luftwaffe and a pack of German submarines sank one cruiser citation needed one destroyer two patrol boats 4 000 tons and 22 merchant ships 139 216 tons Nevertheless most convoys did get through 1943In some areas such as the most intense part of the Battle of the Atlantic the Germans enjoyed fleeting success Grueling operations wasted the Luftwaffe away on the eastern front after 1942 dubious discuss Soviet Il 2 ground attack planes attack an enemy column Voronezh Front 1 July 1943 In early 1943 the Allied strategic bombers were directed against U boat pens which were easy to reach and which represented a major strategic threat to Allied logistics However the pens were very solidly built it took 7 000 flying hours to destroy one sub there about the same effort that it took to destroy one third of Cologne Japan was also still recovering from Midway It kept producing planes but made few innovations and the quality of its new pilots deteriorated steadily Gasoline shortages limited the training and usage of the air forces British technical advances Building on their lead in radar and their experience with the Battle of the Beams RAF Bomber Command developed a variety of devices to enable precision strategic bombing Gee and Oboe were beam riding blind bombing aids while H2S was the first airborne ground scanning radar system enabling improved navigation to a target and bombing at night and through cloud if necessary These could be used in conjunction with Pathfinder bombers to guarantee accurate strikes on targets in all weathers The British also developed the techniques of Operational Research and Analysis using mathematical techniques to examine military tactics and recommend best practice These were used to optimise the impacts of night bombing raids which were expanded to sizes in excess of 1000 bombers attacking one objective Defensive technologies were invented such as rear facing airborne radar to detect night fighters and the use of Window to blind German radar giving the RAF striking capability far in excess of that which the Luftwaffe had been able to achieve The de Havilland Mosquito bomber was beginning to be delivered in late 1942 combining a useful bomb load with speed to evade German fighters it was used to harass German air defences as well as challenging strikes such as that on a Gestapo headquarters or prisons as in Operation Jericho The RAF also developed the use of earthquake bombs to attack huge structures thought to be invulnerable to conventional bombing Creating the largest bomb used in the war and a specialist squadron to deliver it a number of critical German infrastructure assets were destroyed such as the Mohne and Edersee Dams The use of developments such as these contributed greatly to the success of the air bombing strategy during the remainder of the war citation needed Mediterranean theatre In the Mediterranean the Luftwaffe tried to stop the invasions of Sicily and Italy with tactical bombing They failed because the Allied air forces systematically destroyed most of their air fields The Germans ferociously opposed the Allied landing at Anzio in February 1944 but the Luftwaffe was outnumbered 5 to 1 and so outclassed in equipment and skill that it inflicted little damage Italian air space belonged to the Allies and the Luftwaffe s strategic capability was nil The Luftwaffe threw everything it had against the Salerno beachhead but was outgunned ten to one and then lost the vital airfields at Foggia Foggia became the major base of the 15th Air Force Its 2 000 heavy bombers hit Germany from the south while the 4 000 heavies of the 8th Air Force used bases in Britain along with 1 300 RAF heavies While bad weather in the north often cancelled raids sunny Italian skies allowed for more action After that the Luftwaffe had only one success in Italy a raid on the American port at Bari in December 1943 Only 30 out of 100 bombers got through but one hit an ammunition ship which was secretly carrying a stock of mustard gas for retaliatory use should the Germans initiate the use of gas Clouds of American mustard gas caused over 2 000 Allied and civilian casualties 1944 45In early 1944 the Allies continued to bomb Germany while carefully attacking targets in France that could interfere with the invasion planned for June Destroying the Luftwaffe 1944 In late 1943 the AAF suddenly realized the need to revise its basic doctrine strategic bombing against a technologically sophisticated enemy like Germany was impossible without air supremacy General Arnold replaced Ira Eaker with Carl Spaatz and most critically Maj Gen Jimmy Doolittle who fully appreciated the new reality They provided fighter escorts all the way into Germany and back and cleverly used B 17s as bait for Luftwaffe planes which the escorts then shot down Doolittle s slogan was The First Duty of 8th AF Fighters is to Destroy German Fighters one aspect of modern Offensive Counter Air OCA In one Big Week in February 1944 American bombers protected by hundreds of fighters flew 3 800 sorties dropping 10 000 tons of high explosives on the main German aircraft and ball bearing factories The US suffered 2 600 casualties with a loss of 137 bombers and 21 fighters Ball bearing production was unaffected as Nazi munitions boss Albert Speer repaired the damage in a few weeks he even managed to double aircraft production Sensing the danger Speer began dispersing production into numerous small hidden factories Bf 110 built to shoot down heavy Allied bombers by day but mostly achieved success as a repurposed night fighter with Lichtenstein radar fitted An Fw 190A arming up with a BR 21 unguided rocket projectile By 1944 the Allies had overwhelming advantages The Luftwaffe would have to come out and attack or see its planes destroyed at the factory Before getting at the bombers ideally with the twin engined Zerstorer heavy fighters meant for such tasks the Germans had to confront the more numerous American fighters The heavily armed Messerschmitt Bf 110 could kill a bomber particularly those armed with a quartet each of the BR 21 large calibre air to air unguided rockets but its slower speed made it easy prey for Thunderbolts and Mustangs The big slow twin engine Junkers Ju 88C used for bomber destroyer duties in 1942 3 as the American heavy bomber offensive got under way in August 1942 was dangerous because it could stand further off and fire its autocannon armament into the tight B 17 formations sometimes with the specialized Ju 88P heavy calibre Bordkanone armed bomber destroyers attacking but they too were hunted down The same fate also faced single engined fighters carrying pairs of the BR 21 rockets each and the later used heavily autocannon armed Sturmbock bomber destroyer models of the Focke Wulf Fw 190A 8 that replaced the twin engined destroyers Germany s severe shortage of aviation fuel had sharply curtailed the training of new pilots and most of the instructors had been themselves sent into battle Rookie pilots were rushed into combat after only 160 flying hours in training compared to 400 hours for the AAF 360 for the RAF and 120 for the Japanese The low quality German pilots of this late stage in the war never had a chance against more numerous better trained Allied pilots The Germans began losing one thousand planes a month on the western front and another 400 on the eastern front Realizing that the best way to defeat the Luftwaffe was not to stick close to the bombers but to aggressively seek out the enemy by March 1944 Doolittle had ordered the Mustangs to go hunting for Jerries Flush them out in the air and beat them up on the ground on the way home as Mustangs were now ordered to fly in massive fighter sweeps well ahead of the American combat box heavy bomber formations as a determined form of air supremacy effort clearing the skies well ahead of the bombers of any presence of the Luftwaffe s Jagdflieger fighter pilots By early 1944 with the Zerstorergeschwader flown heavy Bf 110G and Me 410A Hornisse twin engined fighters being decimated by the Mustangs whenever they appeared direct attack against the bombers was carried out instead by the Luftwaffe s so named Gefechtsverband formations with heavily armed Fw 190As being escorted by Bf 109Gs as high altitude escorts for the autocannon armed 190As when flying against the USAAF s combat box formations However Doolittle s new air supremacy strategy fatally disabled virtually any and all of the Luftwaffe s defensive efforts throughout 1944 On one occasion German air controllers identified a large force of approaching B 17s and sent all the Luftwaffe s 750 fighters to attack The bogeys were all Mustangs flying well ahead of the American bombers combat boxes which shot down 98 interceptors while losing 11 The actual B 17s were well behind the Mustangs and completed their mission without a loss In February 1944 the Luftwaffe lost 33 of its frontline fighters and 18 of its pilots the next month it lost 56 of its fighters and 22 of the pilots April was just as bad 43 and 20 and May was worst of all at 50 and 25 German factories continued to produce many new planes and inexperienced new pilots did report for duty but their life expectancy was down to a few combat sorties Increasingly the Luftwaffe went into hiding with losses down to 1 per mission the bombers now got through By April 1944 Luftwaffe tactical air power had vanished and Eisenhower decided he could go ahead with the invasion of Normandy He guaranteed the invaders that if you see fighting aircraft over you they will be ours For the last year of the war German military and civilians retreating towards Berlin were hounded by the presence of Soviet low flying aircraft strafing and bombing them an activity in which even the ancient Polikarpov Po 2 a much produced flight training uchebnyy biplane of 1920s design took part However this was but a small measure of the experience the Wehrmacht were receiving due to the sophistication and superiority of the Red Air Force In one strategic operation alone the Yassy Kishinev Strategic Offensive the 5th and 17th Air Armys and the Black Sea Fleet Naval Aviation aircraft achieved a 3 3 to 1 superiority in aircraft over Luftflotte 4 and the Royal Romanian Air Force allowing almost complete freedom from air harassment for the ground troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts The greatest Soviet fighter ace of World War II was Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub who scored 62 victories from 6 July 1943 to 16 April 1945 the top score for any Allied fighter pilot of World War II Normandy As the Luftwaffe disintegrated in 1944 escorting became less necessary and fighters were increasingly assigned to tactical ground attack missions along with the medium bombers To avoid the lethal fast firing German quadruple 20mm flak guns pilots came in fast and low under enemy radar made a quick run then disappeared before the gunners could respond The main missions were to keep the Luftwaffe suppressed by shooting up airstrips and to interdict the movement of munitions oil and troops by attacking at railway bridges and tunnels oil tank farms canal barges trucks and moving trains Occasionally a choice target was discovered through intelligence Three days after D Day Ultra intelligence pinpointed the location of Panzer Group West headquarters A quick raid by British aircraft destroyed its radio gear and killed many key officers ruining the Germans ability to coordinate a panzer counterattack against the beachheads On D Day itself Allied aircraft flew 14 000 sorties while the Luftwaffe managed a mere 260 mostly in defence of its own battered airfields In the two weeks after D Day the Luftwaffe lost 600 of the 800 planes it kept in France From April through August 1944 both the AAF s and the RAF s strategic bombers were placed under Eisenhower s direction where they were used tactically to support the invasion Airmen protested vigorously against this subordination of the air war to the land campaign but Eisenhower forced the issue and used the bombers to simultaneously strangle Germany s supply system burn out its oil refineries and destroy its warplanes With this accomplished Eisenhower relinquished control of the bombers in September In Europe in summer 1944 the AAF started operating out of bases in France It had about 1 300 light bomber crews and 4 500 fighter pilots They claimed destruction of 86 000 railroad cars 9 000 locomotives 68 000 trucks and 6 000 tanks and armored artillery pieces P 47 Thunderbolts alone dropped 120 000 tons of bombs and thousands of tanks of napalm fired 135 million bullets and 60 000 rockets and claimed 4 000 enemy planes destroyed Beyond the destruction itself the appearance of unopposed Allied fighter bombers ruined morale as privates and generals alike dove for the ditches Field Marshal Erwin Rommel for example was seriously wounded in July 1944 when he dared to ride around France in the daytime The commander of the elite 2nd Panzer Division fulminated They have complete mastery of the air They bomb and strafe every movement even single vehicles and individuals They reconnoiter our area constantly and direct their artillery fire The feeling of helplessness against enemy aircraft has a paralyzing effect and during the bombing barrage the effect on inexperienced troops is literally soul shattering Battle of the Bulge At the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 the Allies were caught by surprise by a large scale German offensive In the first days bad weather grounded all planes When the skies cleared 52 000 AAF and 12 000 RAF sorties against German positions and supply lines immediately doomed Hitler s last offensive General George Patton said the cooperation of XIX TAC Air Force was the best example of the combined use of air and ground troops that I ever witnessed Strategic operations An around the clock campaign attacked Germany with British bombers at night and U S aircraft during the day The aircraft tactics and doctrines were different there is argument over how complementary they were in achieving strategic effect The Luftwaffe reached a maximum size of 1 9 million airmen in 1942 Grueling operations wasted it away on the Eastern Front after 1942 It lost most of its fighter aircraft to Mustangs in 1944 while trying to defend against massive American and British air raids and many of the men were sent to the infantry The Luftwaffe in 1944 45 concentrated on anti aircraft defences especially the flak batteries that surrounded all major German cities and war plants They consumed a large fraction of all German munitions production in the last year of the war The flak units employed hundreds of thousands of women who engaged in combat against the Allied bombers The jet powered German Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe far outclassed the best allied piston engined fighters on an individual basis However its protracted development history including such factors as a substantial cutback in funding jet engine research during the critical 1941 42 development period Germany s lack of access to certain exotic raw materials necessary to produce durable jet engines allied strategic bombing of jet engine production lines and Hitler personally ordering design modifications to make the aircraft functional as a fighter bomber ensured that the Me 262 was delayed and produced too late and in too small numbers to stem the Allied tide The Germans also developed air to surface missiles Fritz X Hs 293 surface to air missiles Wasserfall cruise missiles V 1 and ballistic missiles V 2 and other advanced technologies of air warfare to little strategic effect Captured examples of these weapons and especially of their designers contributed to Allied and Soviet military technologies of the Cold War and also of the space race Destroying Germany s oil and transportation Besides knocking out the Luftwaffe the second most striking achievement of the strategic bombing campaign was the destruction of the German oil supply Oil was essential for U boats and tanks while very high quality aviation gasoline was essential for piston engined aircraft The third notable achievement of the bombing campaign was the degradation of the German transportation system its railroads and canals there was little road traffic In the two months before and after D Day American B 24 Liberators B 17 Flying Fortresses and British heavy bombers such as the Lancasters hammered away at the French railroad system Underground Resistance fighters sabotaged some 350 locomotives and 15 000 freight cars every month Critical bridges and tunnels were cut by bombing or sabotage Berlin responded by sending in 60 000 German railway workers but even they took two or three days to reopen a line after heavy raids on switching yards The system deteriorated quickly and it proved incapable of carrying reinforcements and supplies to oppose the Normandy invasion Effect of the strategic bombing source source source source source source US Air Force photographs the destruction in central Berlin in July 1945 Germany and Japan were burned out and lost the war in large part because of strategic bombing Targeting became more accurate in 1944 but the solution to inaccurate bombs was using more of them The AAF dropped 3 5 million bombs 500 000 tons against Japan and 8 million 1 6 million tons against Germany The RAF expended about the same tonnage against Germany US Navy and Marine bombs against Japan are not included nor are the two atomic bombs Typical bomb damage in Hamburg Germany 1945 The cost of the US tactical and strategic air war against Germany was 18 400 aircraft lost in combat 51 000 dead 30 000 POWs and 13 000 wounded Against Japan the AAF lost 4 500 planes 16 000 dead 6 000 POWs and 5 000 wounded Marine Aviation lost 1 600 killed 1 100 wounded Naval aviation lost several thousand dead One fourth of the German war economy was neutralized because of direct bomb damage the resulting delays shortages and roundabout solutions and the spending on anti aircraft civil defence repair and removal of factories to safer locations The raids were so large and often repeated that in city after city the repair system broke down The bombing prevented the full mobilization of German economic potential Planning minister Albert Speer and his staff were effective in improvising solutions and work arounds but their challenge became more difficult every week as one backup system after another broke down By March 1945 most of Germany s factories railroads and telephones had stopped working troops tanks trains and trucks were immobilized About 25 000 civilians died in Dresden on Feb 13 14 where a firestorm erupted Overy estimated in 2014 that in all about 353 000 civilians were killed by British and American bombing of German cities Results of the Meetinghouse raid on Tokyo Joseph Goebbels Hitler s propaganda minister was disconsolate when his beautiful ministry buildings were totally burned out The air war has now turned into a crazy orgy We are totally defenceless against it The Reich will gradually be turned into a complete desert The Dresden raid was to be dwarfed by what was to hit Japan starting less than a month later as initiated by General Curtis E LeMay a series of firebombing raids launched with the first attack by some 334 American B 29 Superfortress heavy bombers on the night of March 9 10 1945 codenamed Operation Meetinghouse burned out some 16 square miles 41 km2 of the capital city of Japan and turned out to be the single most destructive bombing raid in all of aviation history even greater in initial loss of life at 100 000 lives lost at minimum and up to 1 5 million people homeless than the August 6 amp 9 atomic raids each taken as single events See alsoAviation in World War II List of air operations during the Battle of Europe Battle of Britain Battle of the Atlantic Military production during World War II Strategic bombing during World War II Victory Through Air PowerNotesThe British and American jets were in the development stage when the war ended Jet engines ran on cheap kerosene and rockets used plain alcohol the railroad system used coal which was in abundant supply ReferencesCitations R J Overy The Air War 1939 1945 1980 ch 1 Shiner John F January February 1986 Reflections on Douhet the classic approach Air University Review archived from the original on 2016 12 31 retrieved 2009 11 25 America s pursuit of precision bombing 1910 1945 1995 p 68 Williamson Murray Luftwaffe Strategy for Defeat 1933 1945 1985 Richard J Evans The Third Reich at War 2009 436 7 James S Corum The Luftwaffe and Its Allied Air Forces in World War II Parallel War and the Failure of Strategic and Economic Cooperation Air Power History Volume 51 2 2004 Tami Davis Biddle British and American Approaches to Strategic Bombing Their Origins and Implementation in the World War II Combined Bomber Offensive Journal of Strategic Studies March 1995 Vol 18 Issue 1 pp 91 144 Expansion at Last Richard J Overy The Air War 1939 1945 1981 Tami Davis Biddle Bombing By The Square Yard Sir Arthur Harris At War 1942 1945 International History Review vol 9 1 1999 pp 626 664 Hardesty Von 1991 1982 Barbarossa to Berlin A Summing Up Red Phoenix The Rise of Soviet Air Power 1941 1945 Washington D C Smithsonian Institution p 225 ISBN 0 87474 510 1 R J Overy The Air War 1939 1945 1980 p 150 Michulec Robert 1999 Il 2 Il 10 Monografie Lotnicze 22 in Polish Gdansk AJ Press p 27 ISBN 83 86208 33 3 A A Sidorenko The Offensive Moscow 1970 USAF translation p 8 James Sterrett Soviet Air Force theory 1918 1945 2007 pp 86 131 Walter Isaacson Evan Thomas 1997 The Wise Men Six Friends and the World They Made Simon and Schuster p 203 ISBN 978 0 684 83771 0 Alfred Goldberg A History of the United States Air Force 1907 1957 1972 Thomas M Coffey Hap The Story of the U S Air Force and the Man Who Built It General Henry H Hap Arnold 1982 Eric Larrabee Commander in Chief Franklin Delano Roosevelt His Lieutenants and Their War 2004 pp 206 55 Eric M Bergerud Fire in the Sky The Air War in the South Pacific 2001 Stanley Sandler World War II in the Pacific an encyclopedia 2001 p 463 Bergerud Fire in the Sky pp 49 93 Craven and Cate 2 250 253 Bergerud Fire in the Sky pp 5 48 Richard P Hallion Strike From the Sky The History of Battlefield Air Attack 1911 1945 1989 Daniel R ed Mortensen Airpower and Ground Armies Essays on the Evolution of Anglo American Air Doctrine 1940 1943 1998 Charles F Brower World War II in Europe the final year 1988 p 126 Caldwell Donald Muller Richard 2007 The Luftwaffe over Germany defence of the Reich St Paul MN USA MBI Publishing pp 162 163 ISBN 978 1 85367 712 0 Ian Gooderson Air Power at the Battlefront Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943 45 1998 Steven J Zaloga Operation Cobra 1944 Breakout from Normandy 2001 page needed Omar Bradley A general s life an autobiography 1983 p 280 Craven and Cate 3 234 Brendan Phibbs The Other Side of Time A Combat Surgeon in World War II 1987 p 149 Robert Lee Sherrod History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II 1987 Air Poewer Australia The Dawn of The Smart Bomb Ruhrstahl AG SD 1400X Fritz X Air Power Australia 26 March 2011 p 1 Retrieved December 9 2012 458th Bombardment Group H The AZON Project www 458bg com Archived from the original on January 6 2020 Retrieved December 9 2012 Marion Old China Hands Tales amp Stories The Azon Bomb oldchinahands Archived from the original on March 6 2012 Retrieved March 20 2012 Newman Michael E Students Help Renovate a Part of WWII and NIST History NIST Tech Beat February 2001 Preservation National Institute of Standards and Technology Archived from the original on April 2 2015 Retrieved March 19 2015 Edward L Homze The Luftwaffe s Failure to Develop a Heavy Bomber before World War II Aerospace Historian 1977 Vol 24 Issue 1 pp 20 26 Jean Denis Lepage Aircraft of the Luftwaffe 1935 1945 2009 p 162 David Mets Master of Airpower General Carl A Spatz 1997 Craven and Cate 3 540 calls CROSSBOW a failure T D Dungan V 2 A Combat History of the First Ballistic Missile 2005 Matt P E 2015 02 07 The Shanghai Incident 1932 Pacific Eagles Retrieved 2021 01 04 Hui Samuel 2019 Chinese Air Force vs the Empire of Japan www warbirdforum com Retrieved 2021 01 04 Sun Lianggang Vlasova Evgenia Shanghai 1937 Where World War II Began shanghai1937 tv Retrieved 2021 01 04 Little Michael 2015 10 07 World War 2 Flying Ace Arthur Chin s Amazing True Story Disciples of Flight with Andy Chan John Gong Retrieved 2021 01 05 Gustavsson Hakans Hakans Aviation page Sino Japanese Air War 1937 Biplane Fighter Aces China Retrieved 2021 01 07 Gustavsson Hakans Hakans Aviation page Sino Japanese Air War 1938 Biplane Fighter Aces China Retrieved 2021 01 05 Gustavsson Hakans Hakans Aviation page Sino Japanese Air War 1939 Biplane Fighter Aces China Retrieved 2021 01 05 红岩春秋 编辑 杨文钊 2020 08 15 上游新闻 上游新闻 汇聚向上的力量 Retrieved 2021 01 05 Gustavsson Hakans Hakans Aviation page Sino Japanese Air War 1940 Biplane Fighter Aces China Retrieved 2021 01 04 Goebel Greg 2020 11 01 The Mitsubishi A6M Zero www airvectors net Retrieved 2021 01 04 Chai George 敌 102 号作战 www flyingtiger cacw com Archived from the original on 2022 03 30 Retrieved 2021 01 07 网易历史 张世东 2018 10 20 日军轰炸重庆的 战果 让中国军民的意志更加坚强 手机网易网 3g 163 com Retrieved 2021 01 07 O Connell John F 2016 Dealing with the Japanese Zero Air Power History 63 3 25 30 ISSN 1044 016X JSTOR 26276773 Network Warfare History 2019 05 08 Japan s World War II Zero Fighter Terrified the Allies The National Interest Retrieved 2021 01 04 LoProto Mark 2018 04 09 Pearl Harbor Scourge Mitsubishi A6M Zero Visit Pearl Harbor Archived from the original on 2020 11 30 Retrieved 2021 01 07 Cheung 2015 pp 76 80 81 Hsu Chi hsiang was shot down in his I 15bis in the air combat debut of the A6M Zero a 20mm shell went through the I 15bis luggage compartment blew all the bristles off his toothbrush he would exact some personal revenge on 04 March 1944 over the Japanese airbase at Chiung Shan on Hainan island shooting down the lead Zero in a flight of three the flight leader or perhaps the instructor 蔡 乔治 九一三壁山空戰 www flyingtiger cacw com Retrieved 2021 01 31 格鬥中 徐吉驤發現自己的座機無論爬升 滾轉 下降還是加速均不如這種兇猛的日機 唯有盤旋半徑尚可和敵機稍比一下高低 雖然他多次占位咬上了日機 但是偏偏他座機的機槍扳機調的太緊 射擊時總是慢半拍 無法把握來之不易的戰機 雖然這樣 徐吉驤仍然沒有脫離戰場 因為他認為日機由漢口 宜昌勞師遠襲 油料必然不足支撐久戰 只要在堅持一段時間 便可以利用日機油盡返航的時機予以打擊 糾纏 那時便可以挽回一點面子 也就是這樣的想法 使得大多數的中國飛行員在空中苦苦鏖戰 不料 這次不行了 最後 他座機發動機的潤滑油漏光了 這架伊 152在璧山上空停車 徐吉驤迅速判斷了一下形勢 決定不跳傘 以免被兇殘的日機沖傘射擊 他躲掉日機攻擊後奇跡般的迫降在一片稻田裡 飛機被摔得七零八落 幸好燃油 滑油均已耗盡 飛機沒有燃燒 徐吉驤機智地躲在座機殘骸內 等盤旋在頭頂的兩架日機離去後 才爬出完全損壞的座機 Michael Schaller American Air Strategy in China 1939 1941 The Origins of Clandestine Air Warfare American Quarterly Vol 28 No 1 Spring 1976 pp 3 19 in JSTOR Martha Byrd Chennault Giving Wings to the Tiger 2003 LIFE MAGAZINE 1942 03 30 Flying Tigers In Burma LIFE March 30 1942 www cbi theater com Retrieved 2021 01 31 MacKinnon Stephen R 2019 05 24 That Time US Firebombed a Japanese Occupied Chinese City Killing 20 000 Anti Empire Archived from the original on 2020 05 03 Retrieved 2021 04 25 One week before Christmas in 1944 nearly 200 American planes raided the Chinese city of Wuhan dropping 500 tons of incendiary bombs Thousands of Chinese lives were lost in this incident which has received very little attention in the intervening decades Here is a rare account of this tragic event by Stephen R MacKinnon history professor at Arizona State University and author of the book Wuhan 1938 Herman S Wolk Cataclysm General Hap Arnold and the Defeat of Japan 2010 p 88 Daniel F Harrington A Careless Hope American Air Power and Japan 1941 Pacific Historical Review Feb 1979 Vol 48 Issue 1 pp 217 238 in JSTOR Brian P Farrell The Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940 1942 2006 Koichi Shimada Japanese Naval Air Operations in the Philippines Invasion U S Naval Institute Proceedings Jan 1955 Vol 81 Issue 1 pp 1 17 Paolo E Coletta Launching the Doolittle Raid on Japan April 18 1942 Pacific Historical Review Vol 62 No 1 Feb 1993 pp 73 86 in JSTOR Clayton Chun and Howard Gerrard The Doolittle Raid 1942 America s first strike back at Japan 2006 H P Willmott Empires in the Balance Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942 2008 H P Willmott Barrier and the Javelin Japanese and Allied Strategies February to June 1942 2008 Mark Stille and John White The Coral Sea 1942 The first carrier battle 2009 Gordon W Prange Miracle at Midway 1982 For the Japanese perspective see Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully Shattered Sword The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway 2005 Richard B Frank Guadalcanal The Definitive Account of the Landmark 1992 Mark Parillo The Pacific War An Interpretation in Richard Jensen Jon Davidann and Yoneyuki Sugita eds Trans Pacific Relations America Europe and Asia in the Twentieth Century Praeger 2003 pp 93 103 Bergerud Fire in the Sky pp 341 347 Bergerud Fire in the Sky p 344 49 Mae Mills Link and Hubert A Coleman Medical Support of the Army Air Forces in World War II 1955 p 851 THE WAR Firebombing Germany amp Japan 13 15 February amp 9 10 March 1945 pbs org PBS Archived from the original on 13 October 2007 Retrieved June 25 2013 William W Ralph Improvised Destruction Arnold LeMay and the Firebombing of Japan War in History Vol 13 No 4 495 522 2006 Thomas R Searle It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 The Journal of Military History Vol 66 No 1 Jan 2002 pp 103 133 in JSTOR Syohgo Hattori Kamikaze Japan s Glorious Failure Air Power History 1996 43 1 14 27 ISSN 1044 016X Rikihei Inoguchi and Tadashi Nakajima The Divine Wind Japan s Kamikaze Force in World War II 1994 Robin L Rielly Kamikazes Corsairs and Picket Ships Okinawa 1945 2010 quoted in Norman Friedman U S naval weapons every gun missile mine and torpedo used by the U S Navy from 1883 to the present day 1982 p 93 David C Earhart All Ready to Die Kamikazefication and Japan s Wartime Ideology Critical Asian Studies 2005 37 4 569 596 ISSN 1467 2715 John Ray Skates The invasion of Japan alternative to the bomb 2000 p 241 Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender issued at Potsdam Germany 26 July 1945 Retrieved on 12 October 2013 Richard Hargreaves Blitzkrieg Unleashed The German Invasion of Poland 1939 2010 James S Corum The Luftwaffe s Army Support Doctrine 1918 1941 Journal of Military History 1995 59 1 pp 53 76 Dr L de Jong Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog Dutch Airwar Statistics Studiegroep Luchtoorlog 1939 1945 Archived from the original on 2016 05 30 Retrieved 13 September 2016 Statistieken 1939 1945 Statistics 1939 1945 Studiegroep Luchtoorlog 1939 1945 Archived from the original on June 19 2013 Retrieved 13 September 2016 Norman L R Franks The air battle of Dunkirk Kimber 1983 Stephen Bungay Most Dangerous Enemy The Definitive History of the Battle of Britain 2000 Wagner Ray Nowarra Heinz 1971 German Combat Planes A Comprehensive Survey and History of the Development of German Military Aircraft from 1914 to 1945 New York City Doubleday amp Company p 229 Hermann Plocher The German Air Force Versus Russia 1941 1943 1968 Lonnie O Ratley III A Lesson of History The Luftwaffe and Barbarossa Archived 2014 09 25 at the Wayback Machine Air University Review March April 1983 Christer Bergstrom Barbarossa The Air Battle July December 1941 2007 Buckley John 1999 Air Power in the Age of Total War Indiana University Press pp 134 143 ISBN 0 253 33557 4 Ray Wagner ed The Soviet Air Force in World War II The Official History Melbourne Wren Publishing 1973 p 301 ISBN 0 85885 194 6 Hill Alexander 2007 British Lend Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort June 1941 June 1942 The Journal of Military History 71 3 773 808 doi 10 1353 jmh 2007 0206 JSTOR 30052890 S2CID 159715267 Hardesty 1991 p 135 Red Phoenix p 253 Appendixes Sonke Neitzel Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe Co operation in the War against Britain 1939 1945 War in History 2003 10 4 pp 448 463 Wesley Frank Craven and James L Cate The Army Air Forces in World War II v 2 Europe Torch to Pointblank 1949 pp 41 165 online Archived 2009 03 25 at the Wayback Machine Ehlers Robert S Jr The Mediterranean Air War Airpower and Allied Victory in World War II 2015 Mayock Thomas J 1949 I The North African Campaigns in Craven Cate eds The Army Air Forces in World War II vol 2 Europe Torch to Pointblank pp 205 6 via Hyperwar Foundation Max Hastings The Second World War A World in Flames 2004 p 131 Manfred Griehl Fighters Over Russia 1997 Webster amp Franklin 4 24 George Southern Poisonous inferno World War II tragedy at Bari Harbour 2002 Craven amp Cate 3 43 6 Horst Boog ed Germany and the Second World War Volume VII The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia 1943 1944 5 2006 pp 159 256 Murray Strategy for Defeat p 308 9 Stephen L McFarland and Wesley Phillips Newton To Command the Sky The Battle for Air Superiority Over Germany 1942 1944 2006 p 160 Craven and Cate 3 664 McFarland and Newton To Command the Sky The Battle for Air Superiority Over Germany 1942 1944 2006 p 239 Wagner Ray ed and Leland Fetzer trans The Soviet Air Force in World War II The Official History Melbourne Wren Publishing 1973 p 301 ISBN 0 85885 194 6 Aviation History Interview with World War II Soviet Ace Ivan Kozhedub HistoryNet 12 June 2006 Archived from the original on 1 September 2016 Retrieved 19 August 2016 Murray Luftwaffe 183 207 211 Craven amp Cate 3 47 Craven amp Cate 3 227 235 Craven amp Cate 3 272 British Air Ministry Rise and Fall of the German Air Force 1948 Edward B Westermann Flak German Anti Aircraft defences 1914 1945 2005 pp 257 84 Overy Air War p 121 D Ann Campbell Women in Combat The World War Two Experience in the United States Great Britain Germany and the Soviet Union Journal of Military History April 1993 57 301 323 online Levine Alan J 1992 The Strategic Bombing of Germany 1940 1945 Westport Connecticut Praeger p 143 ISBN 0 275 94319 4 Richard Overy Why the Allies Won 1997 pp 2 20 Office of Statistical Control Army Air Forces Statistical Digest World War II 1945 table 34 online Archived 2012 03 26 at the Wayback Machine R J Overy The Air War 1939 1945 1980 p 122 25 Albert Speer Inside the Third Reich Memoirs 1970 pp 278 91 Mark Clodfelter Beneficial Bombing The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power 1917 1945 2011 pp 148 174 178 Richard Overy The Bombers and the Bombed Allied Air War Over Europe 1940 1945 2014 pp 306 7 Hugh Trevor Roper ed Final entries 1945 the diaries of Joseph Goebbels 1978 p 18 Long Tony March 9 2011 March 9 1945 Burning the Heart Out of the Enemy www wired com Conde Nast Digital Retrieved February 18 2015 Sources Boog Horst ed The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War An International Comparison 1992 Cheung Raymond OSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES 126 Aces of the Republic of China Air Force Oxford Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2015 ISBN 978 14728 05614 Overy Richard J The Air War 1939 1945 1981 Murray Williamson Luftwaffe Strategy for Defeat 1933 1945 1985 online edition Archived from the original on 2003 03 07 Retrieved 2009 11 25 a href wiki Template Cite web title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Craven Wesley Frank and J L Cate The Army Air Forces in World War II 1949 online edition Golberg Alfred ed A History of the United States Air Force 1907 1957 1957 Bungay Stephen The Most Dangerous Enemy The Definitive History of the Battle of Britain 2nd ed 2010 This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article World War II air war which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3 0 Unported License but not under the GFDL This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article Air warfare of World War II which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3 0 Unported License but not under the GFDL Further readingBased on Citizendium bibliography Ehlers Robert S Jr The Mediterranean Air War Airpower and Allied Victory in World War II 2015 Werrell Kenneth P The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II Costs and Accomplishments Journal of American History 73 1986 702 713 in JSTORBy country United States Futtrel Robert Frank Ideas Concepts Doctrines Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force 1907 1960 1989 influential overview online edition Official Guide to the Army Air Forces 1944 reprinted as AAF A Directory Almanac and Chronicle of Achievement 1988 Great Britain Fisher David E A Summer Bright and Terrible Winston Churchill Lord Dowding Radar and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain 2005 Hamlin John F No Safe Haven Military Aviation in the Channel Islands 1939 1945 Air Enthusiast No 83 September October 1999 pp 6 15 ISSN 0143 5450 Hough Richard and Denis Richards The Battle of Britain 1989 480 pp Messenger Charles Bomber Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive 1939 1945 1984 defends Harris Overy Richard The Battle of Britain The Myth and the Reality 2001 192 pages Richards Dennis et al Royal Air Force 1939 1945 The Fight at Odds Vol 1 HMSO 1953 official history vol 3 online edition Terraine John A Time for Courage The Royal Air Force in the European War 1939 1945 1985 Verrier Anthony The Bomber Offensive 1969 British Webster Charles and Noble Frankland The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939 1945 HMSO 1961 4 vol Important official British history Wood Derek and Derek D Dempster The Narrow Margin The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power 1930 40 1975 Germany British Air Ministry Rise and Fall of the German Air Force 1948 reprint 1969 excellent official history reprint has introduction by H A Probert who was not the author Fritzsche Peter Machine Dreams Airmindedness and the Reinvention of Germany American Historical Review 98 June 1993 685 710 Air warfare was seen as a growing threat to Germany and it became a means of national mobilization and redemption Nazi Germany believed that air warfare would allow the country to rebuild itself in a racial compact During World War II air warfare became a means for rejuvenating authority domestically and increasing imperial influence abroad Galland Adolf The First and the Last German Fighter Forces in World War II 1955 Murray Williamson Luftwaffe Strategy for Defeat 1933 1945 1985 standard history online edition Archived from the original on 2003 03 07 Retrieved 2009 11 25 a href wiki Template Cite web title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Overy Richard Goering 1984 Wagner Ray and Nowarra Heinz German Combat Planes A Comprehensive Survey and History of the Development of German Military Aircraft from 1914 to 1945 New York Doubleday 1971 Wilt Alan F Alan F Wilt War from the Top German and British Military Decision Making During World War II 1990 Overy R J The German Pre War Aircraft Production Plans November 1936 April 1939 The English Historical Review Vol 90 No 357 Oct 1975 pp 778 797 in JSTORJapan Coox Alvin D The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Air Forces in Alfred F Hurley and Robert C Erhart eds Air Power and Air Warfare 1979 84 97 Inoguchi Rikihei and Tadashi Nakajima The Divine Wind Japan s Kamikaze Force in World War II 1958 USSR Bhuvasorakul Jessica Leigh Unit Cohesion Among the Three Soviet Women s Air Regiments During World War II 2004 online Gordon Yefim Soviet Air Power in World War 2 2008 Hardesty Von Out of the Blue The Forgotten Story of the Soviet Air Force in World War II Historically Speaking 2012 13 4 pp 23 25 historiography Hardesty Von and V Hardesty Red Phoenix The Rise of Soviet Air Power 1941 1945 Smithsonian Institution Press 1982 Kipp Jacob W Barbarossa Soviet covering forces and the initial period of war Military history and AirLand battle Journal of Slavic Military Studies 1988 1 2 pp 188 212 Sterrett James Soviet Air Force Theory 1918 1945 Routledge 2007 Wagner Ray ed Soviet Air Force in World War II The Official History 1973 Whiting Kenneth R Soviet Air Power in World War II in Alfred F Hurley and Robert C Erhart eds Air Power and Air Warfare 1979 98 127Airmen Bhuvasorakul Jessica Leigh Unit Cohesion Among the Three Soviet Women s Air Regiments During World War II 2004 online Byrd Martha Chennault Giving Wings to the Tiger 1987 451 pp the standard biography Ford Daniel Flying Tigers Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group 1991 Caine Philip D American Pilots in the RAF The WWII Eagle Squadrons 1993 Craven Wesley Frank and J L Cate The Army Air Forces in World War II 1949 vol 6 Men and Planes vol 7 Services Around the World including medical engineering WAC online edition Davis Benjamin O Benjamin O Davis Jr American An Autobiography 1991 prominent black flier Dunn William R Fighter Pilot The First American Ace of World War II 1982 Francis Charles E 1997 The Tuskegee Airmen The Men who Changed a Nation Branden Books ISBN 978 0 8283 2029 0 Francis Martin The Flyer British Culture and the Royal Air Force 1939 1945 2009 culture and ideology of flying Freeman Roger The American Airman in Europe 1992 Freeman Roger The British Airman 1989 Hawkins Ian ed B 17s Over Berlin Personal Stories from the 95th Bomb Group H 1990 Link Mae Mills and Hubert A Coleman Medical Support of the Army Air Forces in World War II GPO 1955 McGovern James R Black Eagle General Daniel Chappie James Jr 1985 leading black pilot Miller Donald L Masters of the Air America s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany 2006 excerpt Morrison Wilbur H Point of No Return The Story of the 20th Air Force 1979 Nanney James S Army Air Forces Medical Services in World War II 1998 online edition Newby Leroy W Target Ploesti View from a Bombsight 1983 Nichol John Tail End Charlies The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944 45 2006 Osur Alan M Blacks in the Army Air Forces during World War II The Problem of Race Relations 1986 online editionCommanders Air Commanders American Byrd Martha Chennault Giving Wings to the Tiger 1987 451 pp Davis Richard G Carl A Spaatz and the Air War in Europe 1993 Frisbee John L ed Makers of the United States Air Force USAF 1987 short biographies Kenney George C General Kenney Reports A Personal History of the Pacific War 1949 primary source Leary William ed We Shall Return MacArthur s Commanders and the Defeat of Japan 1942 1945 1988 LeMay Curtis Mission with LeMay 1965 autobiography primary source Meilinger Phillip S Hoyt S Vandenberg The Life of a General 1989 Mets David R Master of Airpower General Carl A Spaatz 1988 HAP Arnold and Stimson Arnold Henry H Global Mission 1949 autobiography Bonnett John Jekyll and Hyde Henry L Stimson Mentalite and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb on Japan War in History 1997 4 2 174 212 ISSN 0968 3445 Fulltext Ebsco Coffey Thomas Hap General of the Air Force Henry Arnold 1982 Davis Richard G HAP Henry H Arnold Military Aviator 1997 38 pp online edition Huston John W The Wartime Leadership of Hap Arnold In Alfred F Hurley and Robert C Erhart eds Air Power and Air Warfare 1979 168 85 Huston John W American Airpower Comes of Age Gen Henry H Arnold s World War II Diaries 2002 primary source vol 1 online Archived from the original on 2003 03 06 Retrieved 2009 11 25 a href wiki Template Cite web title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Larrabee Eric Commander in Chief Franklin Delano Roosevelt His Lieutenants and Their War 1987 chapters on Arnold and LeMay Malloy Sean L Atomic Tragedy Henry L Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb Against Japan 2008 Air Commanders Other Messenger Charles Bomber Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive 1939 1945 1984 defends Harris Overy Richard Goering 1984 Technology Jets Rockets Radar Proximity Fuze Baumann Ansbert Evakuierung des Wissens Die Verlagerung luftkriegsrelevanter Forschungsinstitute nach Oberschwaben 1943 1945 Zeitschrift fur wurttembergische Landesgeschichte 67 2008 461 496 Baxter James Phinney Scientists Against Time 1946 Brown Louis A Radar History of World War II Technical and Military Imperatives 1999 online excerpt Constant II Edward W The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution 1980 Longmate Norman Hitler s Rockets The Story of the V 2s 1985 Moye William T Developing the Proximity Fuze and Its Legacy 2003 online version Neufeld Michael J Hitler the V 2 and the Battle for Priority 1939 1943 The Journal of Military History 57 July 1993 5 38 in JSTOR Neufeld Michael J The Rocket and the Reich Peenemunde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era 1995 Swords Sean S Technical History of the Beginnings of Radar 1986 Tactical aircraft weapons tactics amp combat Batchelor John and Bryan Cooper Fighter A History of Fighter Aircraft 1973 Cooling Benjamin Franklin ed Close Air Support 1990 GPO Craven Wesley Frank and J L Cate The Army Air Forces in World War II 1949 vol 6 Men and Planes online edition Francillon R J Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War 1970 Gruen Adam L Preemptive defence Allied Air Power Versus Hitler s V Weapons 1943 1945 1999 online edition Hallion Richard P D Day 1944 Air Power Over the Normandy Beaches and Beyond 1998 online edition Hallion Richard P Strike From the Sky The History of Battlefield Air Attack 1911 1945 1989 Hogg I V Anti Aircraft A History of Air Defence 1978 Jane s Fighting Aircraft of World War II 1989 Lundstrom John B The First Team Pacific Naval Air Combat From Pearl Harbor to Midway 1984 McFarland Stephen L and Wesley Phillips Newton To Command the Sky The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany 1942 1944 1991 Mikesh Robert C Broken Wings of the Samurai the Destruction of the Japanese Airforce 1993 Mixon Franklin G Estimating Learning Curves in Economics Evidence from Aerial Combat over the Third Reich KYKLOS 46 Fall 1993 411 19 Germans learned faster if they survived Mortensen Daniel R ed Airpower and Ground Armies Essays on the Evolution of Anglo American Air Doctrine 1940 1943 1998 online edition Archived from the original on 2003 04 07 Retrieved 2009 11 25 a href wiki Template Cite web title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Okumiya Masatake and Jiro Horikoshi with Martin Caidin Zero 1956 Schlaifer Robert Development of Aircraft Engines 1950 Sherrod Robert History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II 1952 Spire David N Air Power for Patton s Army The 19th Tactical Air Command in the Second World War 2002 online edition Warnock A Timothy Air Power versus U boats Confronting Hitler s Submarine Menace in the European theatre 1999 online edition Werrell Kenneth P Archie Flak AAA and SAM A Short Operational History of Ground Based Air defence GPO 1988 online edition Archived from the original on 2003 03 07 Retrieved 2009 11 25 a href wiki Template Cite web title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Strategic bombing Atomic bomb amp surrender of Japan Allen Thomas B and Norman Polmar Code Name Downfall The Secret Plan to Invade Japan And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb 1995 Bernstein Barton Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki Early Thinking About Tactical Nuclear Weapons International Security Spring 1991 149 173 in JSTOR Bernstein Barton F The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered Foreign Affairs 74 Jan Feb 1995 135 52 Feis Herbert Japan Subdued The Atomic Bomb and the End of the War in the Pacific 1961 Gordin Michael D 2009 Five Days in August How World War II Became a Nuclear War Princeton University Press ISBN 978 1 4008 2410 6 Holley I B ed Hiroshima After Forty Years 1992 Jones Vincent C Manhattan The Army and the Bomb GPO 1985 official construction history Libby Justin The Search for a Negotiated Peace Japanese Diplomats Attempt to Surrender Japan Prior to the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki World Affairs 156 Summer 1993 35 45 Miles Rufus E Jr Hiroshima The Strange Myth of a Half Million American Lives Saved International Security 10 Fall 1985 121 40 Pape Robert A Why Japan Surrendered International Security 18 Fall 1993 154 201 in JSTOR Rhodes Richard The Making of the Atomic Bomb 1986 good overview excerpt and text search Rotter Andrew J Hiroshima The World s Bomb 2008 excerpt and text search Skates John The Invasion of Japan 1994 excellent military history of the greatest non battle of all time VanderMuelen Jacob Planning for V J Day by the U S Army Air Forces and the Atomic Bomb Controversy Journal of Strategic Studies 16 June 1993 227 39 AAF did not expect quick surrender bomb was military use Walker J Samuel The Decision to Drop the Bomb A Historiographical Update Diplomatic History 14 1990 97 114 Especially useful Walker J Samuel Prompt and Utter Destruction Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan 2004 online excerptEthics amp civilians Childers Thomas Facilis descensus averni est The Allied Bombing of Germany and the Issue of German Suffering Central European History Vol 38 No 1 2005 pp 75 105 in JSTOR Crane Conrad C Bombs Cities and Civilians American Airpower Strategy in World War II 1993 Crane Conrad C Evolution of U S Strategic Bombing of Urban Areas Historian 50 Nov 1987 14 39 defends AAF Davis Richard G Operation Thunderclap The US Army Air Forces and the Bombing of Berlin Journal of Strategic Studies March 1991 14 90 111 Garrett Stephen A Ethics and Airpower in World War II The British Bombing of German Cities 1993 Havens Thomas R H Valley of Darkness The Japanese People and World War Two 1978 Hopkins George F Bombing and the American Conscience During World War II The Historian 28 May 1966 451 73 Lammers Stephen E William Temple and the bombing of Germany an Exploration in the Just War Tradition The Journal of Religious Ethics 19 Spring 1991 71 93 Explains how the Archbishop of Canterbury justified strategic bombing Markusen Eric and David Kopf The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century 1995 Overy Richard The Bombers and the Bombed Allied Air War Over Europe 1940 1945 2014 covers strategic bombing by and upon all major countries excerpt and text search Schaffer Ronald American Military Ethics in World War II The Bombing of German Civilians Journal of American History 67 1980 318 34 in JSTOR Schaffer Ronald Wings of Judgment American Bombing in World War II 1985 Spaight J M Air Power and War Rights 1947 legal Speer Alfred Inside the Third Reich 1970 memoir of top Nazi economic planner Walzer Michael Just and Unjust Wars A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations 1977 philosophical approachStrategic bombing doctrine Boog Horst ed The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War 1992 Clodfelter Mark Aiming to Break Will America s World War II Bombing of German Morale and its Ramifications Journal of Strategic Studies June 2010 Vol 33 Issue 3 pp 401 435 Davis Richard G Bombing Strategy Shifts 1944 45 Air Power History 39 1989 33 45 Griffith Charles The quest Haywood Hansell and American strategic bombing in World War II 1999 ISBN 978 1 4289 9131 6 Haywood S Hansell The Air Plan that Defeated Hitler Arno Press 1980 ISBN 978 0 405 12178 4 Kennett Lee B A History of Strategic Bombing 1982 Koch H W The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany the Early Phase May September 1940 The Historical Journal 34 March 1991 pp 117 41 online at JSTOR Levine Alan J The Strategic Bombing of Germany 1940 1945 1992 online edition Archived 2012 07 16 at the Wayback Machine MacIsaac David Strategic Bombing in World War Two 1976 McFarland Stephen L The Evolution of the American Strategic Fighter in Europe 1942 44 Journal of Strategic Studies 10 1987 189 208 Messenger Charles Bomber Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive 1939 1945 1984 defends Harris Overy Richard The Means to Victory Bombs and Bombing in Overy Why the Allies Won 1995 pp 101 33 Sherry Michael The Rise of American Air Power The Creation of Armageddon 1987 important study 1930s 1960s Smith Malcolm The Allied Air Offensive Journal of Strategic Studies 13 Mar 1990 67 83 Sterrett James Soviet Air Force Theory 1918 1945 Routledge 2007 Verrier Anthony The Bomber Offensive 1968 British Webster Charles and Noble Frankland The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939 1945 HMSO 1961 4 vol Important official British history Wells Mark K Courage and air warfare the Allied aircrew experience in the Second World War 1995 Werrell Kenneth P The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II Costs and Accomplishments Journal of American History 73 1986 702 713 good place to start in JSTOR Werrell Kenneth P Death From the Heavens A History of Strategic Bombing 2009 Strategic bombing aircraft and target Beck Earl R Under the Bombs The German Home Front 1942 1945 1986 Berger Carl B 29 The Superfortress 1970 Bond Horatio ed Fire and the Air War 1974 Boog Horst ed Germany and the Second World War Volume VII The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia 1943 1944 5 Oxford UP 2006 928pp official German history vol 7 excerpt and text search online edition Charman T C The German Home Front 1939 45 1989 Craven Wesley Frank and J L Cate The Army Air Forces in World War II 1949 vol 6 Men and Planes online edition Cross Robin The Bombers The Illustrated Story of Offensive Strategy and Tactics in the Twentieth Century 1987 Daniels Gordon ed A Guide to the Reports of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey 1981 Davis Richard G Bombing the European Axis Powers A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive 1939 1945 2006 online edition PDF Archived from the original on 2009 03 05 Retrieved 2011 10 03 a href wiki Template Cite web title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Edoin Hoito The Night Tokyo Burned The Incendiary Campaign against Japan 1988 Japanese viewpoint Hansen Randall Fire and Fury The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942 1945 2009 says AAF was more effective than RAF Hastings Max Bomber Command 1979 Haulman Daniel L Hitting Home The Air Offensive Against Japan 1998 online edition Hecks Karl Bombing 1939 45 The Air Offensive Against Land Targets in World War Two 1990 Jablonsky Edward Flying Fortress 1965 Jane s Fighting Aircraft of World War II 1989 reprint of 1945 edition Johnsen Frederick A B 17 Flying Fortress The Symbol of Second World War Air Power 2000 excerpt MacIsaac David ed The United States Strategic Bombing Survey 10 v 1976 reprints of some reports Madej Victor ed German war economy the motorization myth 1984 based on v 64a 77 and 113 of the U S Strategic Bombing reports on oil and chemical industry Madej Victor ed The War machine German weapons and manpower 1939 1945 1984 Middlebrook Martin The Schweinfurt Regensburg Mission American Raids on 17 August 1943 1983 Mierzejewski Alfred C The Collapse of the German War Economy 1944 1945 Allied Air Power and the German National Railway 1988 Pape Robert A Punishment and Denial The Coercive Use of Air Power 1995 Ralph William W Improvised Destruction Arnold LeMay and the Firebombing of Japan War in History Vol 13 No 4 495 522 2006 online at Sage Read Anthony and David Fisher The Fall of Berlin 1993 Searle Thomas R It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 The Journal of Military History Vol 66 No 1 Jan 2002 pp 103 133 in JSTOR United States Strategic Bombing Survey The Campaigns of the Pacific War 1946 Online edition United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report European War 1945 online edition key primary source United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report Pacific War 1946 online edition key primary source Westermann Edward B Flak German Anti Aircraft defences 1914 1945 2005 External linksAir Force official histories mostly pamphlets The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia compiled by Kent G Budge 4000 short articles
