title: Leigh Taylor-Young

text: She married John Morton in January 2013 at PRANA, headquarters of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness in Los Angeles. She is an ordained minister in the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, founded by the late John-Roger Hinkins and now led by her husband.


Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole is a 2010 3D computer-animated fantasy adventure film directed by Zack Snyder. Based on the "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" book series by Kathryn Lasky, the film was written by John Orloff and Emil Stern and features the voices of Helen Mirren, Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving, Emily Barclay, Abbie Cornish, Ryan Kwanten, Anthony LaPaglia, Miriam Margolyes, Sam Neill, Richard Roxburgh, and David Wenham. An international co-production between the United States and Australia, the film was produced by Village Roadshow Pictures and Animal Logic, following their success with the 2006 film "Happy Feet". In "Legend of the Guardians", Soren, who loves listening to stories, is kidnapped and brought by the Pure Ones to St. Aegolious Home for Orphaned Owls led by Metal Beak and Nyra where the owlets are brainwashed to becoming soldiers. Soren befriended Gylfie, and later escape the facility to find the Island of Ga'Hoole with new-found friends and together fight against the evil army.


title: Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

text: "Legend of the Guardians" was theatrically released in RealD 3D and IMAX 3D in North America on September 24, 2010, and in Australia on September 30, 2010, by Warner Bros. Pictures; it was accompanied by a new 3D Looney Tunes cartoon entitled "Fur of Flying". The film grossed over $140 million worldwide against a budget of $80 million. Critics praised its dark tone, visuals and voice acting, but criticized the screenplay and said it failed to live up to its potential.


text: Soren, a young owl, lives in the Tyto Forest with his family. Soren enjoys listening to his father's stories of the "Guardians of Ga'Hoole," valiant warrior owls who fought the evil Pure Ones. Kludd, Soren's older brother, becomes jealous of Soren after they are taught how to fly and pushes him off a branch, causing them both to fall to the ground. The brothers are kidnapped by Jatt and Jutt, two owls who work for the Pure Ones, and taken to the St. Aegolius Home for Orphaned Owls.


text: The Pure Ones' queen, Nyra, announces that the owls will either become soldiers or pickers (owls who find " flecks," bits of magnetic metal that are used to build a superweapon). While Kludd becomes a soldier, Soren and another owl named Gylfie become pickers and are put through a brainwashing process called "moon-blinking," but they resist. A boreal owl named Grimble teaches them to fly and tells them to find the Great Tree of Ga'Hoole, but Nyra finds out and kills him. Soren and Gylfie escape and soon meet two more owls named Digger and Twilight. In their hollow, Soren reunites with Mrs. P, a blind snake who is his family's nest maid. She agrees to go with them and find the Guardians.


text: The owls fly towards the sea of Hoolemere and reach the legendary shrine of the Guardians, guarded by an oracular echidna who helps the owls find the Island of Ga'Hoole. While flying, the band encounters a fierce storm and Digger's wings freeze, causing him to fall into the sea, but they are saved by Boron and Barran, the king and queen of the Guardians. They lead the party to the Great Tree of Ga'Hoole, where Soren tells the Guardians about the Pure Ones' plans. Boron sends a great grey owl called Allomere out with two scouts to investigate St. Aegolius.


text: The owls stay in the Tree of Ga'Hoole for a long time and are looked after by a young short-eared owl named Otulissa. One day, Soren learns that Ezylryb, his teacher, is really Lyze of Kiel, who fought and defeated Metal Beak, Nyra's mate. Allomere returns from his scouting mission with news that his two wingmen were killed in an ambush. He brings back two moon-blinked owlets, one of which is Soren's younger sister Eglantine. The Guardians prepare for battle and fly out towards St. Aegolius. When she finally snaps out of her trance, Eglantine tells Soren that it was Kludd who moon-blinked her and gave her to Allomere, confirming that Allomere is a traitor and that the Guardians are actually flying into a trap. The owls fly back to St. Aegolius where they find Metal Beak holding the Guardians captive in a machine powered by flecks and guarded by bats.


text: While Twilight, Gylfie and Digger fend off the bats sent by Metal Beak, Soren navigates his way through a forest fire and manages to disable the fleck trap. Upon returning, he sees Kludd, who attacks him. Soren is shocked that his brother is a Pure One, but a glory-obsessed Kludd tells him that the Pure Ones truly believe in him in a way that he’s never felt before. The brothers fight until Kludd falls into the fire below. Soren grabs a flaming branch and stabs Metal Beak to death, causing Nyra to retreat with the remaining Pure Ones.


text: When they return to the tree, Soren, Gylfie, Digger, and Twilight are initiated as new Guardians. Later, Soren tells the story to a group of owlets, revealing that Nyra is still out there and that Kludd's body was never retrieved. The film ends with the owls flying off into another storm.


text: Warner Bros. acquired the rights to produce a computer-animated film to the book series "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" by Kathyrn Lasky in June 2005. Donald De Line was set to produce the film and Lasky was set to write the screenplay. In April 2008, Zack Snyder signed on as director, Zareh Nalbandian took over as producer and a new screenplay was written by John Orloff and Emil Stern. Production began in Australia in February 2009.


text: The film's animation process took place at Animal Logic's headquarters in Sydney, Australia. A team of over 500 artists, technicians and support staff were amassed to design and animate 15 unique species of owls, as well as other forest creatures such as snakes, crows, bats, centipedes, bees, beetles, moths, a hermit crab, a Tasmanian devil, and an echidna.


text: The animated end credits sequence shows the adventures of Soren, Gylfie, Digger and Twilight as told by the young owls as if they were putting on a shadow play performance in the Great Tree. This idea was conceived by Felicity Coonan and took around three months to animate. Coonan wanted the sequence to be a playful experiment in 2D and 3D, as the classic storytelling form of shadow puppets is a 2D medium. The credits were designed to be legible without 3D glasses.


text: Much of the cast was announced in the early months of 2009. Hugh Jackman, Hugo Weaving and Ryan Kwanten were announced in January; Jim Sturgess, Geoffrey Rush, Rachael Taylor, and David Wenham in February; and Emilie de Ravin in March. The rest of the cast was announced in November 2009, including Emily Barclay, Abbie Cornish, Jay Laga’aia, Miriam Margolyes, Helen Mirren, and Sam Neill who replaced Jackman as the role of Allomere. However, like Jackman, both Taylor and Ravin were also no longer in the film. Laga’aia was also going to voice Twilight but was replaced by Anthony LaPaglia.


text: "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole" was theatrically released in the United States on September 24, 2010, and in Australia on September 30, 2010. After Warner Bros. ended its long-time theatrical distribution deal with Village Roadshow in Australia at the end of 2020, Warner Bros. Pictures distributed the film worldwide, with Roadshow Entertainment (via Village Roadshow Pictures) distributing in Australia and New Zealand.


text: The 2010 Region 1 DVD includes a documentary featurette about owls, entitled "True Guardians of the Earth", featuring ornithologists and conservationists, and presented by child actor Rico Rodriguez and character Digger the Owl (voiced by David Wenham). The cartoon "Fur of Flying" is also included on the DVD.


text: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment released a video game based on the film for the Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo DS platforms on September 14, 2010. The game was developed by Krome Studios for Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 while the Nintendo DS version was developed by Tantalus Media.


text: In the US it took in $5.5 million on opening day, ranking third at the box office in the US. It ranked second on Saturday, earning $6 million, and was No. 1 on Sunday, earning $4.6 million (US). Overall, it earned $16,112,211 on its opening weekend, reaching second place at the box office behind "" in America. This makes "Legend of the Guardians" Zack Snyder's first film not to reach No. 1 on its opening weekend in the US.


text: In its second weekend, the film slipped 32% to $10,887,543 and held on to second place, this time behind "The Social Network", claiming the title of the biggest second-weekend hold for an animated feature in 2010. The film ended its run in January 2011 with a $55.7 million domestic (US) gross. The film also grossed over $84 million from its international release, bringing its global box office total to $140,073,390.


text: Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 52% of 133 sampled critics gave the film positive reviews and that it has received an average rating of 5.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Legend of the Guardians" dark tone and dazzling visuals are to be admired, even if they're ultimately let down by a story that never lives up to its full potential." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


text: Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" gave the film a score of 3/5 stars, describing it as a "likable family movie" and writing: "It's all very weird sometimes, but engaging: a nice half-term treat for younger children." John Walsh of "The Independent" wrote: "The stars of this computerised epic are the Design and Art departments, who provide stunning landscapes, caves and kingdoms, and whose 3D magic is genuinely thrilling", but added: "The dark atmosphere and violent fights would scare most under-nines." Stephen Cole of "The Globe and Mail" gave the film a score of 3/4 stars, describing it as "a splendid adventure sure to thrill children and fantasy buffs, while leaving everyone else passably entertained."


text: Tim Robey of "The Daily Telegraph" gave the film a score of 2/5 stars, praising the film's visuals, but criticizing its dialogue and humor. He concluded: "We’re left with something gorgeous, turgid, and emotionally impenetrable – less a movie, more an Imax screensaver." Andy Webster of "The New York Times" wrote that the film "may be a hoot, but for all its pyrotechnics, it fails to soar." Sandra Hall of "The Sydney Morning Herald" wrote: "It takes a certain knack to make a film which has a sinister feel to it without being the least bit exciting but Snyder has done it with this one."


text: According to Animal Logic's CEO, Zareh Nalbandian, there were discussions for a sequel to "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole" as of 2011, but nothing solid as to when production would begin, as such a sequel would come in behind several other films Animal Logic will be producing or already is producing with Warner Bros.


text: Jim Sturgess and Ryan Kwanten have both said in a 2010 interview that they would reprise their roles as Soren and Kludd if a sequel ever entered production.


text: WaterTower Music released the film's official soundtrack on September 21, 2010. The album includes thirteen score tracks composed by David Hirschfelder. The soundtrack also includes the song "To the Sky", Owl City exclusively for the film.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: A manga adaptation by Yasunori Bizen began serialization in Media Factory's manga magazine "Monthly Comic Flapper" on September 5, 2022, and a spin-off light novel, titled "Lycoris Recoil: Ordinary Days" by Asaura was published under ASCII Media Works' "Dengeki Bunko" on September 9, 2022. A stage play adaptation of the series will be performed from January 2023.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: Takina Inoue is a member of a government-sponsored all-female task force of assassins and spies made up of orphans known as "Lycoris", an undercover group (named after the flower) who eliminate criminals and terrorists in Tokyo while disguised as high school students to maintain peace in Japan, with roots in a fictional pre-Meiji group named "Higanbana". However, during an operation to intercept a large exchange of firearms, she starts firing indiscriminately at the enemies in order to save a colleague that was taken as hostage, jeopardizing the safety of other Lycoris in the process. As a result, the agency dismissed her for disobeying orders. She was then transferred to work with an elite Lycoris agent Chisato Nishikigi, who is known for her involvement in the destruction of the old radio tower, on a branch of the agency that operates undercover as a café called "LycoReco". Intending to be reinstated back to the agency, Takina cooperates with Chisato on managing the café, while the peace that is being protected by the Lycoris is being challenged by terrorists led by Majima.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: When Asaura's former editor-in-charge had a meeting about "Saekano" with Shin-ichirō Kashiwada, a producer from A-1 Pictures, he talked about Asaura's works, "this guy is crazy." He then introduced Asaura to Kashiwada. Later Asaura received an invitation to a new anime project. Kashiwada had read Asaura's "Death Need Round", which is a "girls with guns" work before he invited Asaura to the project. Asaura, therefore, decided to include guns in the new story. He created the main characters and the worldview, with some deliverables including the synopsis and a few short novels.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: In "Lycoris Recoil", some scenes take place in Sumida, Tokyo and features Kinshichō Park, Sumida Aquarium, water bus on Sumida River, aerial view of Ryōgoku, etc.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: The series was announced in December 2021. It is produced by A-1 Pictures and directed by Shingo Adachi, and features an original story by Asaura, character designs by Imigimuru, and music composed by Shūhei Mutsuki. The series aired from July 2 to September 24, 2022, on Tokyo MX, GYT, GTV, and BS11. The opening theme song is "Alive" by ClariS, while the ending theme song is by Sayuri. Aniplex of America licensed the series outside of Asia and streamed the series on Crunchyroll for an English simulcast and simuldub, from August 20, 2022. Plus Media Networks Asia licensed the series in Southeast Asia and will release it on Aniplus Asia.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: A manga adaptation of "Lycoris Recoil" by Yasunori Bizen began serialization in Media Factory's manga magazine "Monthly Comic Flapper" on September 5, 2022.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: A spin-off light novel, titled "Lycoris Recoil: Ordinary Days" by Asaura was published under ASCII Media Works' "Dengeki Bunko" imprint on September 9, 2022.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: A stage play adaptation announced on November 18, 2022, it will be performed at Tennozu Galaxy Theater in January 2023, produced by Office Endless, directed by Akira Yamazaki, and written by Yо̄ Hosaka.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: Contributors at Anime News Network and "Anime Feminist" gave mixed reception. The series was praised for the characters and visuals, but was also criticized for its "glorification" of political and state violence. In the site's full review of the first three episodes, published later, Christopher Farris praised the series for its revival of the girls with guns subgenre, the characters, and action sequences. However, he expressed some concern that the show's attempt to combine the genre with slice of life story elements could become "mere distractions" and potentially sidestep any narrative address of the premise's political implications.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: Discussing the first four episodes in "Anime Feminist"'s "check-in" for the summer 2022 anime season, Caitlin Moore described the series as strong entertainment, praising the action, visuals, and character designs, as well as the possible queer subtext of the relationships in the show but criticized the perceived tonal dissonance and continued lack of clarity as to its moral or political positions on the subject matter of state violence.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: "Lycoris Recoil" ranked first in the Anime Corner Summer 2022 Weekly Poll chart for three consecutive weeks since its premiere. As of August 24, 2022, "Lycoris Recoil" became the "Most-Watched Anime from the summer season" in Japan, ranking 6th place overall among the "Top 10 Most-Watched Anime in Japan" for August 2022.


title: Lycoris Recoil

text: In a tweet, "Metal Gear" series creator Hideo Kojima praised "Lycoris Recoil". Kojima later accepted a request to write an endorsement which was slated to be featured on the cover of "Lycoris Recoil: Ordinary Days", the series' upcoming light novel spinoff. On August 22, 2022, Kadokawa stated that the novel had sold so well in pre-orders that they had requested a second printing ahead of its September 9 release, which series creator Asaura noted was a rare occurrence.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Mount Kosciuszko ( ; Ngarigo: , ), previously spelled Mount Kosciusko, is mainland Australia's tallest mountain, at 2,228 metres (7,310 ft) above sea level. It is located on the Main Range of the Snowy Mountains in Kosciuszko National Park, part of the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves, in New South Wales, Australia, and is located west of Crackenback and close to Jindabyne, near the border with Victoria.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The mountain was named by the Polish explorer Paweł (Paul) Edmund Strzelecki in 1840, in honour of Polish-Lithuanian freedom fighter General Tadeusz Kościuszko, because of its perceived resemblance to the Kościuszko Mound in Kraków, Poland.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: An exploration party led by Strzelecki and James Macarthur beside him with Indigenous guides Charlie Tarra and Jackey set off on what is called Strzelecki’s Southern expedition. Macarthur was seeking new pastures. Strzelecki wanted to investigate the climate, geology, paleontology and geography of NSW and to publish his findings. This included identifying Australia’s highest summit, which Strzelecki reached on 12 March 1840.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The approach was made from Geehi Valley. After climbing Hannel’s Spur, the peak now named Mount Townsend was reached. Here Strzelecki used his instruments to make observations. Mt Townsend is Australia's second highest mountain, adjacent to and almost the same height as Mt Kosciuszko, and Strzelecki saw that the neighbouring peak was slightly higher. In the presence of Macarthur he named the higher summit Mount Kosciusko after the famous Polish-Lithuanian military leader who died in 1817. As it was late, Macarthur decided to return to camp and Strzelecki alone climbed the Kosciuszko summit.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Based on Strzelecki’s records, Australia’s highest summit was mapped. A cartographical mistake made in an edition of Victorian maps transposed Mount Kosciusko to the position of the present Mount Townsend. Later editions of the map continued to show the original location. NSW maps did not make this mistake.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The Victorian error created confusion. In 1885, Austrian explorer Robert von Lendenfeld, guided by James M. Spencer, a local pastoralist, aided by a map containing the transposition error, reached Mount Townsend believing it was Mount Kosciusko. According to Spencer, the local Aboriginals called Mount Kosciusko "Tar-gan-gil". Like Strzelecki, Lendenfeld also observed that the neighbouring peak was higher. He named it Mount Townsend to honour the surveyor who in 1846 traversed the peak.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Lendenfeld claimed he had identified and reached the highest peak of the continent. The NSW Department of Mines discovered Lendenfeld's mistake and assigned the name Mount Townsend to the second-highest mountain of the range. Lendenfeld's announcement created further confusion. When Lendenfeld's mistake was corrected, a popular legend was created that the established names of the two mountains were swapped rather re-educate the populace of the name of the highest mountain.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The confusion was straightened out in 1940 by B. T. Dowd, a cartographer and historian of the NSW Lands Department. His study reaffirmed that the mountain named by Strzelecki as Mount Kosciuszko was indeed, as the NSW maps had always shown, Australia’s highest summit. When Macarthur’s field book of the historical journey was published in 1941 by C. Daley, it further confirmed Dowd’s clarification. This means that Targangil, mentioned in Spencer’s 1885 article, was the indigenous name of Mount Townsend, not of Mount Kosciusko. According to A.E.J. Andrews, Mount Kosciuszko had no indigenous name. Detailed analysis of the mountain history can be found in books by H.P.G. Clews and in the cited A.E.J. Andrews' book "Kosciusko: The Mountain in History".


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The name of the mountain was previously spelt "Mount Kosciusko", an Anglicisation, but the spelling "Mount Kosciuszko" was officially adopted in 1997 by the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales. The traditional English pronunciation of Kosciuszko is , but the pronunciation is now sometimes used, which is substantially closer to the Polish pronunciation .


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: There are several native Aboriginal (Ngarigo) names associated with Mount Townsend, where J. Macarthur recorded in 1840 some campings of the natives. There is some confusion as to the exact sounds. These are "Jagungal, Jar-gan-gil, Tar-gan-gil, Tackingal"; however, all of them mean Bogong Moth, which aestivate on the mountain.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: In 2019, "Kunama Namadgi" was submitted to the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales as a proposed dual name for Mount Kosciuszko. The proposal was submitted by the Toomaroombah Kunama Namadgi Indigenous Corporation, which states that the proposed name means "snow" and "mountain". According to Uncle John Casey, the mountain's Ngarigo name has "been Kunama Namadgi for 4,000 years, since we've been on country, until the white man came in the early 1800s and that's when they changed it". However, Iris White, the chairperson of the Southern Kosciuszko Executive Advisory Committee, disputed that account, stating "that name is not from our language. It's offensive because in some of our languages 'Kunama' actually means faeces". White said that a new name should not be given "just for the sake of it sounding Aboriginal or sounding good".


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The mountain was formed by geologic uplift. It was not formed by any recent volcanic activity. Eroded granite intrusions remain at the summit as large boulders above the more heavily eroded sedimentary rocks.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Mount Kosciuszko is the highest summit in mainland Australia. Until 1977 it was possible to drive from Charlotte Pass to within a few metres of the summit, but in 1977 the road was closed to public motor vehicle access due to environmental concerns. The road is open from Charlotte Pass for walkers and cyclists for to Rawson Pass, at an elevation of above sea level. From there a walking path leads to the summit.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The peak may also be approached from Thredbo, taking 3 to 3.5 hours for a round trip. This straightforward walk starts from the top of the Thredbo Kosciuszko Express chairlift, which operates all year-round. The walking path is popular in summer, and is a mesh walkway to protect the native vegetation and prevent erosion. It is to Rawson Pass, where it meets the track from Charlotte Pass, and from where it is a further to the summit.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Australia's highest public toilet was built at Rawson pass in 2007, to cope with the more than 100,000 people visiting the mountain each summer.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The third and often overlooked route up Mount Kosciuszko is up the very challenging and historic Hannel's Spur Track (15.5 km), which approaches from the NW and is the only route to pass through the Western Fall Wilderness Zone – passing through four different bio-diversity bands along the ascent. The Hannel's Spur Track is officially Australia's biggest vertical ascent of 1800m. This is the same route that explorer Paul Strzelecki climbed and discovered Kosciuszko in 1840 and also the same annual route that the stockmen once brought the cattle up/down from the valley almost 2 km below to graze in the alpine meadows of Kosi throughout the summer. The various aboriginal tribes from the Murray valley also used this same route annually for millennia to access Kosciuszko to harvest the delicacies of Bogong moths that were abundant throughout the summer months and to socialise with other tribes from the coast and northern plains. The Hannel's Spur Track trailhead (sign) is about a 1.4 km hike SSE of the Geehi Rest Area on the Alpine Way road between the towns of Thredbo and Khancoban.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The peak and the surrounding areas are snow-covered in winter and spring (usually beginning in June and continuing until October or later). The road from Charlotte Pass is marked by snow poles and provides a guide for cross-country skiers, and the track from Thredbo is easily followed until covered by snow in winter.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Kosciuszko National Park is also the location of the downhill ski slopes closest to Canberra and Sydney, containing the Thredbo, Charlotte Pass, and Perisher ski resorts. Mount Kosciuszko may have been ascended by Indigenous Australians long before the first recorded ascent by Europeans.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Each year in December, an ultramarathon running race called the Coast to Kosciuszko ascends to the top of Mount Kosciuszko after starting at the coast away.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Higher peaks exist within territory administered or claimed by Australia: outside the continent are Mawson Peak () on Heard Island and Dome Argus (), Mount McClintock () and Mount Menzies () in the Australian Antarctic Territory.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Although not in Australia, Puncak Jaya in New Guinea, Indonesia, which stands at , is the tallest mountain in the Australian continent and as well as Oceania.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: The 1863 picture by Eugene von Guerard hanging in the National Gallery of Australia titled "Northeast view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko" is actually from Mount Townsend.


title: Mount Kosciuszko

text: Australian rock band Midnight Oil recorded a song called "Kosciusko" on its 1984 album "Red Sails in the Sunset", referring to the mountain. The spelling was updated to "Kosciuszko" for the group's 1997 compilation album, "20,000 Watt R.S.L."


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: World War II (1939–1945) involved sustained strategic bombing of railways, harbours, cities, workers' and civilian housing, and industrial districts in enemy territory. Strategic bombing as a military strategy is distinct both from close air support of ground forces and from tactical air power. During World War II, many military strategists of air power believed that air forces could win major victories by attacking industrial and political infrastructure, rather than purely military targets. Strategic bombing often involved bombing areas inhabited by civilians, and some campaigns were deliberately designed to target civilian populations in order to terrorize them and disrupt their usual activities. International law at the outset of World War II did not specifically forbid the aerial bombardment of cities – despite the prior occurrence of such bombing during World War I (1914–1918), the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Strategic bombing during World War II began on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and the "Luftwaffe" (German Air Force) began bombing Polish cities and the civilian population in an aerial bombardment campaign. As the war continued to expand, bombing by both the Axis and the Allies increased significantly. The Royal Air Force began bombing military targets in Germany, such as docks and shipyards, in March 1940, and began targeting Berlin in August 1940. In September 1940 the Luftwaffe began targeting British cities in the Blitz. After the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Luftwaffe attacked Soviet cities and infrastructure. From February 1942 onward, the British bombing campaign against Germany became even less restrictive and increasingly targeted industrial sites and civilian areas. When the United States began flying bombing missions against Germany, it reinforced British efforts. The Allies attacked oil installations, and controversial firebombings took place against Hamburg (1943), Dresden (1945), and other German cities.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In the Pacific War, the Japanese bombed civilian populations throughout the war (e.g. in Chongqing). US air raids on Japan began in earnest in October 1944 and by March 1945 had started their escalation into widespread firebombing, which culminated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Neither the "Luftwaffe" nor the RAF achieved a knockout blow by destroying enemy morale. However, some argued that strategic bombing of non-military targets could significantly reduce enemy industrial capacity and production and in the opinion of interwar-period proponents of the strategy, the surrender of Japan vindicated strategic bombing. The death toll of strategic bombing was considerable, not only in terms of those bombed but in the loss of air crews. Hundreds of thousands – if not over a million – civilians died, millions were made homeless, and many major cities were destroyed, especially in Europe and Asia.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which address the codes of wartime conduct on land and at sea, were adopted before the rise of air power. Despite repeated diplomatic attempts to update international humanitarian law to include aerial warfare, it was not updated before the outbreak of World War II. The absence of specific international humanitarian law did not mean aerial warfare was not covered under the laws of war, but rather that there was no general agreement of how to interpret those laws. This means that aerial bombardment of civilian areas in enemy territory by all major belligerents during World War II was not prohibited by positive or specific customary international humanitarian law.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Many reasons exist for the absence of international law regarding aerial bombing in World War II. Most nations had refused to ratify such laws or agreements because of the vague or impractical wording in treaties such as the 1923 Hague Rules of Air Warfare. Also, the major powers' possession of newly developed advanced bombers was a great military advantage; they would be hard pressed to accept any negotiated limitations regarding this new weapon. In the absence of specific laws relating to aerial warfare, the belligerents' aerial forces at the start of World War II used the 1907 Hague Conventions — signed and ratified by most major powers — as the customary standard to govern their conduct in warfare, and these conventions were interpreted by both sides to allow the indiscriminate bombing of enemy cities throughout the war.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Article 25 of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions on Land Warfare also did not provide a clear guideline on the extent to which civilians may be spared; the same can be held for naval forces. Consequently, cyclical arguments, such as those advanced by Italian general and air power theorist Giulio Douhet, do not appear to violate any of the convention's provisions. Due to these reasons, the Allies at the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials never criminalized aerial bombardment of non-combatant targets and Axis leaders who ordered a similar type of practice were not prosecuted. Chris Jochnick and Roger Normand in their article "The Legitimation of Violence 1: A Critical History of the Laws of War" explains that: "By leaving out morale bombing and other attacks on civilians unchallenged, the Tribunal conferred legal legitimacy on such practices."


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The concept of strategic bombing and its wide-scale implementation during WWII led to a post-war debate if it was moral.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The first was based on the Just War theory and emphasized that noncombatants possess an inherent right to be spared from the harm of war and should not be intentionally targeted. Noncombatant immunity and proportionality in use of force were insisted upon.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The second approach was grounded in the so-called "industrial web theory" that proposed to concentrate on destroying enemy military, industrial, and economic infrastructure instead of forces in the field as the fastest way to win the war. Proponents of this approach argued that civilian deaths inflicted by strategic bombing of the cities during the WWII were justified in the sense that they allowed to shorten the war and thus helped to avoid much more casualties.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The third approach was demonstrated by Michael Walzer in his "Just and Unjust Wars" (1977). Walzer formulated the so-called "supreme emergency" thesis. While agreeing in general with prior Just War theoretical postulates, he came to a conclusion that a grave threat to a moral order would justify the use of an indiscriminate force.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Before World War II began, the rapid pace of aviation technology created a belief that groups of bombers would be capable of devastating cities. For example, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin warned in 1932, "The bomber will always get through".


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: When the war began on 1 September 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the neutral United States, issued an appeal to the major belligerents (Britain, France, Germany, and Poland) to confine their air raids to military targets, and "under no circumstances undertake bombardment from the air of civilian populations in unfortified cities" The British and French agreed to abide by the request, with the British reply undertaking to "confine bombardment to strictly military objectives upon the understanding that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all their opponents". Germany also agreed to abide by Roosevelt's request and explained the bombing of Warsaw as within the agreement because it was supposedly a fortified city—Germany did not have a policy of targeting enemy civilians as part of their doctrine prior to World War II.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The British Government's policy was formulated on 31 August 1939: if Germany initiated unrestricted air action, the RAF "should attack objectives vital to Germany's war effort, and in particular her oil resources". If the "Luftwaffe" confined attacks to purely military targets, the RAF should "launch an attack on the German fleet at Wilhelmshaven" and "attack warships at sea when found within range". The government communicated to their French allies the intention "not to initiate air action which might involve the risk of civilian casualties"


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: While it was acknowledged bombing Germany would cause civilian casualties, the British government renounced deliberate bombing of civilian property, outside combat zones, as a military tactic. The British changed their policy on 15 May 1940, one day after the German bombing of Rotterdam, when the RAF was given permission to attack targets in the Ruhr Area, including oil plants and other civilian industrial targets which aided the German war effort, such as blast furnaces that at night were self-illuminating. The first RAF raid on the interior of Germany took place on the night of 15/16 May 1940 while the Battle of France was still continuing.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: During the German invasion of Poland, the "Luftwaffe" engaged in massive air raids against Polish cities, bombing civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and targeting fleeing refugees. Notably, the "Luftwaffe" bombed the Polish capital of Warsaw, and the small towns of Wieluń and Frampol. The bombing of Wieluń, one of the first military acts of World War II and the first major act of bombing, was carried out on a town that had little to no military value. Similarly, the bombing of Frampol has been described as an experiment to test the German tactics and weapons effectiveness. British historian Norman Davies writes in "": "Frampol was chosen partly because it was completely defenceless, and partly because its baroque street plan presented a perfect geometric grid for calculations and measurements."


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Frampol was chosen as an experimental object, because test bombers, flying at low speed, weren't endangered by AA fire. Also, the centrally placed town hall was an ideal orientation point for the crews. We watched possibility of orientation after visible signs, and also the size of village, what guaranteed that bombs nevertheless fall down on Frampol. From one side it should make easier the note of probe, from second side it should confirm the efficiency of used bombs.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The directives issued to the "Luftwaffe" for the Polish Campaign were to prevent the Polish Air Force from influencing the ground battles or attacking German territory. In addition, it was to support the advance of German ground forces through direct tactical and indirect air support with attacks against Polish mobilisation centres and thus delay an orderly Polish strategic concentration of forces and to deny mobility for Polish reinforcements through the destruction of strategic Polish rail routes.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Preparations were made for a concentrated attack (Operation Wasserkante) by all bomber forces against targets in Warsaw. However, the operation was cancelled, according to Polish professor Tomasz Szarota due to bad weather conditions, while German author Horst Boog claims it was possibly due to Roosevelt's plea to avoid civilian casualties; according to Boog the bombing of military and industrial targets within the Warsaw residential area called Praga was prohibited. Polish reports from the beginning of September note strafing of civilians by German attacks and bombing of cemeteries and marked hospitals (marking of hospitals proved counterproductive as German aircraft began to specifically target them, until hospitals were moved into the open to avoid such targeting), and indiscriminate attacks on fleeing civilians which according to Szarota was a direct violation of the Hague Convention. Warsaw was first attacked by German ground forces on 9 September and was put under siege on 13 September. German author Boog claims that with the arrival of German ground forces, the situation of Warsaw changed; under the Hague Convention, the city could be legitimately attacked as it was a defended city in the front line that refused calls to surrender.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The bombing of the rail network, crossroads, and troop concentrations played havoc on Polish mobilisation, while attacks upon civilian and military targets in towns and cities disrupted command and control by wrecking the antiquated Polish signal network. Over a period of a few days, "Luftwaffe" numerical and technological superiority took its toll on the Polish Air Force. Polish Air Force bases across Poland were also subjected to "Luftwaffe" bombing from 1 September 1939.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 13 September, following orders of the "ObdL" to launch an attack on Warsaw's Jewish Quarter, justified as being for unspecified crimes committed against German soldiers but probably in response to a recent defeat by Polish ground troops, and intended as a terror attack, 183 bomber sorties were flown with 50:50 load of high explosive and incendiary bombs, reportedly set the Jewish Quarter ablaze. On 22 September, Wolfram von Richthofen messaged, "Urgently request exploitation of last opportunity for large-scale experiment as devastation terror raid ... Every effort will be made to eradicate Warsaw completely". His request was rejected. However, Adolf Hitler issued an order to prevent civilians from leaving the city and to continue with the bombing, which he thought would encourage Polish surrender.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 14 September, the French Air attaché in Warsaw reported to Paris, "the German Air Force acted in accordance to the international laws of war [...] and bombed only targets of military nature. Therefore, there is no reason for French retorsions." That day – the Jewish New Year – the Germans concentrated again on the Warsaw's Jewish population, bombing the Jewish quarter and targeting synagogues. According to professor Szarota the report was inaccurate – as its author Armengaud didn't know about the most barbaric bombings like those in Wieluń or Kamieniec, left Poland on 12 September, and was motivated by his personal political goal to avoid French involvement in the war, in addition the report published in 1948 rather than in 1939.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Three days later, Warsaw was surrounded by the Wehrmacht, and hundreds of thousands of leaflets were dropped on the city, instructing citizens to evacuate the city pending a possible bomber attack. On 25 September the "Luftwaffe" flew 1,150 sorties and dropped 560 tonnes of high explosive and 72 tonnes of incendiaries. (Overall, incendiaries made up only three percent of the total tonnage dropped.)


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: To conserve the strength of the bomber units for the upcoming Western campaign, the modern He 111 bombers were replaced by Ju 52 transports using "worse than primitive methods" for the bombing. Due to prevailing strong winds they achieved poor accuracy, even causing some casualties to besieging German troops.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The only Polish raid against a target in Germany was executed by PZL.23 Karaś light bombers against a factory in Ohlau. The Polish air force left Poland on 18 September 1939 due to the Soviet attack on 17 September 1939, and imminent capture of the Polish airstrips and aircraft stationed in eastern parts of Poland. There was no exception; even Pursuit Brigade, an organic part of the defences of the Polish capital, Warsaw, was transferred to Lublin, one week into the war.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: There happened also a non-planned single bombing of the Free City of Danzig. On 7 September, at about 11 PM, a Polish Lublin R.XIII G seaplane was flying over the city, on a mission to attack the German Schleswig-Holstein battleship. However, the vessel had already left the city, so the seaplane flew over the center of Danzig, where it bombed and opened fire on the German troops celebrating the capitulation of the Polish garrison of Westerplatte.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 3 September 1939, following the German invasion of Poland, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany and the war in the West began. The RAF bombed German warships and light vessels in several harbours on 3 and 4 September. Eight German Kriegsmarine men were killed at Wilhelmshaven – the war's first casualties from British bombs; attacks on ships at Cuxhaven and Heligoland followed. The 1939 Battle of the Heligoland Bight showed the vulnerability of bombers to fighter attack.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Germany's first strikes were not carried out until 16 and 17 October 1939, against the British fleet at Rosyth and Scapa Flow. Little activity followed. Meanwhile, attacks by the Royal Air Force dwindled to less than one a month. As the winter set in, both sides engaged in propaganda warfare, dropping leaflets on the populations below. The Phoney War continued.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The British government banned attacks on land targets and German warships in port due to the risk of civilian casualties. For the Germans, the earliest directive from the Luftwaffe head Hermann Göring permitted restricted attacks upon warships anywhere, as well as upon troop transports at sea. However, Hitler's "OKW Direktive Nr 2" and "Luftwaffe Direktive Nr 2", prohibited attacks upon enemy naval forces unless the enemy bombed Germany first, noting, "the guiding principle must be not to provoke the initiation of aerial warfare on the part of Germany."


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: After the Altmark Incident, the "Luftwaffe" launched a strike against the British navy yard at Scapa Flow on 16 March 1940, leading to the first British civilian death. A British attack followed three days later against the German airbase at Hörnum on the island of Sylt, hitting a hospital, although there were no casualties. The Germans retaliated with a naval raid.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: German bombing of France began on the night of 9/10 May. By 11 May, the French reported bombs dropped on Henin-Lietard, Bruay, Lens, La Fere, Loan, Nancy, Colmar, Pontoise, Lambersart, Lyons, Bouai, Hasebrouck, Doullens and Abbeville with at least 40 civilians killed.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: While Allied light and medium bombers attempted to delay the German invasion by striking at troop columns and bridges, the British War Cabinet gave permission for limited bombing raids against targets such as roads and railways west of the Rhine River.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The Germans used the threat of bombing Rotterdam to try to get the Dutch to come to terms and surrender. After a second ultimatum had been issued by the Germans, it appeared their effort had failed and on 14 May 1940, "Luftwaffe" bombers were ordered to bomb Rotterdam in an effort to force the capitulation of the besieged city. The controversial bombing targeted the centre of the besieged city, instead of providing direct tactical support for the hard-pressed German 22nd Infantry Division (under Lt. Gen. von Sponeck, which had airlanded on 10 May) in combat with Dutch forces northwest of the city, and in the eastern part of the city at the Meuse river bridge. At the last minute, the Netherlands decided to submit and sent a plenipotentiary and other negotiators across to German lines. There was an attempt to call off the assault, but the bombing mission had already begun. In legal terms, the attack was performed against a defended part of a city vital for the military objectives and in the front-line, and the bombing respected Article 25 to 27 of the Hague Conventions on Land Warfare.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Out of 100 Heinkel He 111s, 57 dropped their ordnance, a combined 97 tons of bombs. In the resulting fire of the city centre were devastated, including 21 churches and 4 hospitals. The strike killed between 800 and 1,000 civilians, wounded over 1,000, and made 78,000 homeless. Nearly twenty-five thousand homes, 2,320 stores, 775 warehouses and 62 schools were destroyed.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Whilst German historian Horst Boog says British propaganda inflated the number of civilian casualties by a factor of 30, contemporary newspaper reports show the Dutch legation in Paris initially estimated 100,000 people were killed, the Dutch legation in New York later issued a revised figure of 30,000. International news agencies widely reported these figures, portraying Rotterdam as a city mercilessly destroyed by terror bombing without regard for civilian life, with 30,000 dead lying under the ruins. It has been argued that the bombing was against well-defined targets, albeit in the middle of the city, and would have assisted the advancing German Army. The Germans had threatened to bomb Utrecht in the same fashion, and the Netherlands surrendered.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Following the attack on Rotterdam, RAF Bomber Command was authorized to attack German targets east of the Rhine on 15 May 1940; the Air Ministry authorized Air Marshal Charles Portal to attack targets in the Ruhr, including oil plants and other civilian industrial targets which aided the German war effort, such as blast furnaces. The underlying motive for the attacks was to divert German air forces away from the land front. Churchill explained the rationale of his decision to his French counterparts in a letter dated the 16th: "I have examined today with the War Cabinet and all the experts the request which you made to me last night and this morning for further fighter squadrons. We are all agreed that it is better to draw the enemy on to this Island by striking at his vitals, and thus to aid the common cause." Due to the inadequate British bomb-sights the strikes that followed "had the effect of terror raids on towns and villages." On the night of 15/16 May, 96 bombers crossed the Rhine and attacked targets in Gelsenkirchen. 78 had been assigned oil targets, but only 24 claimed to have accomplished their objective. On the night of 17/18 May, RAF Bomber Command bombed oil installations in Hamburg and Bremen; the H.E. and 400 incendiaries dropped caused six large, one moderately large and 29 small fires. As a result of the attack, 47 people were killed and 127 were wounded. Railway yards at Cologne were attacked on the same night. During May, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf and Hanover were attacked in a similar fashion by Bomber Command. In June, attacks were made on Dortmund, Mannheim, Frankfurt and Bochum. At the time, Bomber Command lacked the necessary navigational and bombing technical background and the accuracy of the bombings during the night attacks was abysmal. Consequently, the bombs were usually scattered over a large area, causing an uproar in Germany. On the night of 7/8 June 1940 a single French Navy Farman F.223 aircraft bombed Berlin, the first Allied attack on the capital.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Despite the British attacks on German cities, the Luftwaffe did not begin to attack military and economic targets in the UK until six weeks after the campaign in France was concluded.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 22 June 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany. Britain was determined to keep fighting. On 1/2 July, the British attacked the German warships and in the port of Kiel and the next day, 16 RAF bombers attacked German train facilities in Hamm.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The Battle of Britain began in early June 1940 with small scale bombing raids on Britain. These "Störangriffe" ("nuisance raids") were used to train bomber crews in both day and night attacks, to test defences and try out methods. These training flights continued through July and August, and into the first week of September. Hermann Göring's general order, issued on 30 June 1940, stated:


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The "Kanalkampf" of attacks on shipping and fighter skirmishes over the English Channel started on 4 July, and escalated on 10 July, a day which Dowding later proposed as the official start date for the Battle. Throughout the battle, Hitler called for the British to accept peace, but they refused to negotiate.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Still hoping that the British would negotiate for peace, Hitler explicitly prohibited attacks on London and against civilians. Any airmen who, intentionally or unintentionally, violated this order were punished. Hitler's No. 17 Directive, issued 1 August 1940, established the conduct of war against Britain and specifically forbade the "Luftwaffe" from conducting terror raids. The Führer declared that terror attacks could only be a means of reprisal, as ordered by him.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 6 August Göring finalised plans for "Operation Eagle Attack" with his commanders: destruction of RAF Fighter Command across the south of England was to take four days, then bombing of military and economic targets was to systematically extend up to the Midlands until daylight attacks could proceed unhindered over the whole of Britain, then a major attack was to be made on London causing a crisis with refugees when the intended Operation Sea Lion invasion was due to begin.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 8 August 1940, the Germans switched to raids on RAF fighter bases. To reduce losses, the "Luftwaffe" also began to use increasing numbers of bombers at night. From the night of 19/20 August night bombing targeted the aircraft industry, ports, harbours, and other strategic targets in towns and cities, including suburban areas around London. By the last week of August, over half the missions were flown under the cover of dark. On 24 August, several off-course German bombers accidentally bombed central areas of London. The next day, the RAF bombed Berlin for the first time, targeting Tempelhof airfield and the Siemens factories in Siemenstadt. These attacks were seen by the Germans as indiscriminate due to their inaccuracy, and this infuriated Hitler; he ordered that the 'night piracy of the British' be countered by a concentrated night offensive against the island, and especially London. In a public speech in Berlin on 4 September 1940, Hitler announced that:


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The Blitz was underway. Göring – at Kesselring's urging and with Hitler's support – turned to a massive assault on the British capital. On 7 September 318 bombers from the whole KG 53 supported by eight other "Kampfgruppen", flew almost continuous sorties against London, the dock area which was already in flames from earlier daylight attacks. The attack of 7 September 1940 did not entirely step over the line into a clear terror bombing effort since its primary target was the London docks, but there was clearly an assumed hope of terrorizing the London population. Hitler himself hoped that the bombing of London would terrorize the population into submission. He stated that "If eight million [Londoners] go mad, it might very well turn into a catastrophe!". After that he believed "even a small invasion might go a long way". Another 250 bomber sorties were flown in the night. By the morning of 8 September 430 Londoners had been killed. The "Luftwaffe" issued a press notice announcing they had dropped more than 1,000,000 kilograms of bombs on London in 24 hours. Many other British cities were hit in the nine-month Blitz, including Plymouth, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Southampton, Manchester, Bristol, Belfast, Cardiff, Clydebank, Kingston upon Hull and Coventry. Basil Collier, author of 'The Defence of the United Kingdom', the HMSO's official history, wrote:


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In addition to the conclusions of Basil Collier to that effect there are also, for example, the 1949 memoirs of General Henry H. Arnold who had been in London in 1941 and supported Collier's estimate. Harris noted in 1947 that the Germans had failed to take the opportunity to destroy English cities by concentrated incendiary bombing.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: As the war continued, an escalating war of electronic technology developed. To counter German radio navigation aids, which helped their navigators find targets in the dark and through cloud cover, the British raced to work out the problems with countermeasures (most notably airborne radar, as well as highly effective deceptive beacons and jammers).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Despite causing a great deal of damage and disrupting the daily lives of the civilian population, the bombing of Britain failed to have an impact. British air defenses became more formidable, and attacks tapered off as Germany abandoned its efforts against Britain and focused more on the Soviet Union.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Operation Abigail Rachel, the bombing of Mannheim, was one of the first revenge bombings by the British against a German city on 16 December. The British had been waiting for the opportunity to experiment with such a raid aimed at creating a maximum of destruction in a selected town since the summer of 1940, and the opportunity was given after the German raid on Coventry. Internally it was declared to be a reprisal for Coventry and Southampton. The new bombing policy was officially ordered by Churchill at the start of December, on condition it receive no publicity and be considered an experiment. Target marking and most bombs missed the city centre. This led to the development of the bomber stream. Despite the lack of decisive success of this raid, approval was granted for further Abigails.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: This was the start of a British drift away from precision attacks on military targets and towards area bombing attacks on whole cities.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Goering's first chief of staff, "Generalleutnant" Walther Wever, was a big advocate of the Ural bomber program, but when he died in a flying accident in 1936, support for the strategic bomber program began to dwindle rapidly under Goering's influence. Under pressure from Goering, Albert Kesselring, Wever's replacement, opted for a medium, all-purpose, twin-engine tactical bomber. Erhard Milch, who strongly supported Goering's conceptions, was instrumental in the Luftwaffe's future. Milch believed that the German industry (in terms of raw materials and production capacity) could only produce 1,000 four-engine heavy bombers per year, but many times that number of twin-engine bombers. In spring of 1937, just when the Luftwaffe's own Technical Office had passed the Ju-89 and Do-19 heavy bomber models as ready for testing, Goering ordered a halt to all work on the four-engine strategic bomber program. However, in 1939 the "Bomber B" program sought to produce a twin-engined strategic bomber that could carry nearly-equivalent bombloads of Allied four-engined heavy bombers, but as an advanced development of the pre-war "Schnellbomber" concept. The "Bomber B" designs meant to achieve top level speeds of at least 600 km/h (370 mph). The "Bomber B" program went nowhere, as the intended designs required pairs of combat-reliable aviation engines of at least 1,500 kW (2,000 PS) apiece, something that the German aviation engine industry had serious problems in developing. A further design program was initiated in the late spring of 1942, to develop four-engine (and later six-engine) bombers with trans-Atlantic range to attack the continental United States and aptly named the "Amerika Bomber". This also went nowhere, with only five prototype airframes from two design competitors getting airborne for testing, before the war's end.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The only heavy bomber design to see service with the "Luftwaffe" in World War II was the trouble-prone Heinkel He 177A. In the initial design of November 1937, the RLM had mistakenly decided that the He 177 should also have a medium angle "dive bombing" capability. Ernst Heinkel and Milch vehemently disagreed with this, but the requirement was not rescinded until September 1942 by Goering himself. The He 177A went into service in April 1942, despite an ongoing series of engine fires in the small batch of A-0 series production prototype aircraft. This deficiency, along with numerous, seriously deficient design features, led Goering to decry the He 177A's Daimler-Benz DB 606 powerplants to be nothing more than fire-prone, cumbersome "welded-together engines" in August of that year. Production of the B-series by Heinkel's only subcontractor for the "Greif", "Arado Flugzeugwerke", would not have started until November 1944, because of Arado's focus on the production of its own Arado Ar 234 jet-powered reconnaissance-bomber at the time. The July 1944-initiated "Jägernotprogramm", as well as the devastating effects of Allied bombing on the entire German aviation industry, prevented any production of the He 177B design.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The He 177A entered service in April 1942. At this time, after a destructive RAF attack on Lübeck, Adolf Hitler ordered the "Luftwaffe" to retaliate with the so-called Baedeker Blitz:


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In January 1944, a beleaguered Germany tried to strike a blow to British morale with terror bombing with Operation Steinbock, nicknamed the "Baby Blitz" by the British. At this stage of the war, Germany was critically short of heavy and medium bombers, with the added obstacles of a highly effective and sophisticated British air-defence system, and the increasing vulnerability of airfields in occupied Western Europe to Allied air attack making the effectiveness of German retaliation more doubtful.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: British historian Frederick Taylor asserts that "all sides bombed each other's cities during the war. Half a million Soviet citizens, for example, died from German bombing during the invasion and occupation of Russia. That's roughly equivalent to the number of German citizens who died from Allied raids." The Luftwaffe destroyed numerous Soviet cities through bombing, including Minsk, Sevastopol, and Stalingrad. 20,528 tons of bombs were dropped on Sevastopol in June 1942 alone. German bombing efforts on the Eastern Front dwarfed its commitments in the west. From 22 June 1941 to 30 April 1944, the Luftwaffe dropped 756,773 tonnes of bombs on the Eastern Front, a monthly average of 22,000 tonnes.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: German scientists had invented vengeance weapons – V-1 flying bombs and V-2 ballistic missiles – and these were used to launch an aerial assault on London and other cities in southern England from continental Europe. The campaign was much less destructive than the Blitz. As the Allies advanced across France and towards Germany from the West, Paris, Liège, Lille, and Antwerp also became targets.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The British and US directed part of their strategic bombing effort to the eradication of "wonder weapon" threats in what was later known as Operation Crossbow. The development of the V2 was hit preemptively in the British Peenemünde Raid (Operation Hydra) of August 1943.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The purpose of the area bombardment of cities was laid out in a British Air Staff paper, dated 23 September 1941:


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: During the first few months of the area bombing campaign, an internal debate within the British government about the most effective use of the nation's limited resources in waging war on Germany continued. Should the Royal Air Force (RAF) be scaled back to allow more resources to go to the British Army and Royal Navy or should the strategic bombing option be followed and expanded? An influential paper was presented to support the bombing campaign by Professor Frederick Lindemann, the British government's leading scientific adviser, justifying the use of area bombing to "dehouse" the German workforce as the most effective way of reducing their morale and affecting enemy war production.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Mr. Justice Singleton, a High Court Judge, was asked by Cabinet to look into the competing points of view. In his report, delivered on 20 May 1942, he concluded:


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In the end, thanks in part to the dehousing paper, it was this view which prevailed and Bomber Command would remain an important component of the British war effort up to the end of World War II. A large proportion of the industrial production of the United Kingdom was harnessed to the task of creating a vast fleet of heavy bombers. Until 1944, the effect on German production was remarkably small and raised doubts whether it was wise to divert so much effort—the response being there was nowhere else the effort could have been applied, as readily, to greater effect.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Lindemann was liked and trusted by Winston Churchill, who appointed him the British government's leading scientific adviser with a seat in the Cabinet. In 1942, Lindemann presented the "dehousing paper" to the Cabinet showing the effect that intensive bombing of German cities could produce. It was accepted by the Cabinet, and Air Marshal Harris was appointed to carry out the task. It became an important part of the total war waged against Germany. Professor Lindemann's paper put forward the theory of attacking major industrial centres in order to deliberately destroy as many homes and houses as possible. Working-class homes were to be targeted because they had a higher density and fire storms were more likely. This would displace the German workforce and reduce their ability to work. His calculations (which were questioned at the time, in particular by Professor P. M. S. Blackett of the Admiralty operations research department, expressly refuting Lindemann's conclusions) showed the RAF's Bomber Command would be able to destroy the majority of German houses located in cities quite quickly. The plan was highly controversial even before it started, but the Cabinet thought that bombing was the only option available to directly attack Germany (as a major invasion of the continent was almost two years away), and the Soviets were demanding that the Western Allies do something to relieve the pressure on the Eastern Front. Few in Britain opposed this policy, but there were three notable opponents in Parliament, Bishop George Bell and the Labour MPs Richard Stokes and Alfred Salter.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 14 February 1942, the area bombing directive was issued to Bomber Command. Bombing was to be "focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular of the industrial workers." Though it was never explicitly declared, this was the nearest that the British got to a declaration of unrestricted aerial bombing – Directive 22 said "You are accordingly authorised to use your forces without restriction", and then listing a series of primary targets which included Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, and Cologne. Secondary targets included Braunschweig, Lübeck, Rostock, Bremen, Kiel, Hanover, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Stuttgart, and Schweinfurt. The directive stated that "operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civilian population, and in particular, the industrial workers". Lest there be any confusion, Sir Charles Portal wrote to Air Chief Marshal Norman Bottomley on 15 February "...I suppose it is clear that the aiming points will be the built-up areas, and not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories". Factories were no longer targets.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The first true practical demonstrations were on the night of 28 to 29 March 1942, when 234 aircraft bombed the ancient Hanseatic port of Lübeck. This target was chosen not because it was a significant military target, but because it was expected to be particularly susceptible – in Harris's words it was "built more like a fire lighter than a city". The ancient timber structures burned well, and the raid destroyed most of the city's centre. A few days later, Rostock suffered the same fate.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: At this stage of the air war, the most effective and disruptive examples of area bombing were the "thousand-bomber raids". Bomber Command was able by organization and drafting in as many aircraft as possible to assemble very large forces which could then attack a single area, overwhelming the defences. The aircraft would be staggered so that they would arrive over the target in succession: the new technique of the "bomber stream".


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 30 May 1942, between 0047 and 0225 hours, in Operation Millennium 1,046 bombers dropped over 2,000 tons of high explosive and incendiaries on the medieval town of Cologne, and the resulting fires burned it from end to end. The damage inflicted was extensive. The fires could be seen 600 miles away at an altitude of 20,000 feet. Some 3,300 houses were destroyed, and 10,000 were damaged. 12,000 separate fires raged destroying 36 factories, damaging 270 more, and leaving 45,000 people with nowhere to live or to work. Only 384 civilians and 85 soldiers were killed, but thousands evacuated the city. Bomber Command lost 40 bombers.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Two further thousand-bomber raids were conducted over Essen and Bremen, but neither so utterly shook both sides as the scale of the destruction at Cologne and Hamburg. The effects of the massive raids using a combination of blockbuster bombs (to blow off roofs) and incendiaries (to start fires in the exposed buildings) created firestorms in some cities. The most extreme examples of which were caused by Operation Gomorrah, the combined USAAF/RAF attack on Hamburg, (45,000 dead), attack on Kassel (10,000 dead), the attack on Darmstadt (12,500 dead), the attack on Pforzheim (21,200 dead), the attack on Swinemuende (23,000 dead) and the attack on Dresden (25,000 dead).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: According to economic historian Adam Tooze, in his book "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy", a turning point in the bomber offensive was reached in March 1943, during the Battle of the Ruhr. Over five months 34,000 tons of bombs were dropped. Following the raids, steel production fell by 200,000 tons, making a shortfall of 400,000 tons. Speer acknowledged that the RAF were hitting the right targets, and raids severely disrupted his plans to increase production to meet increasing attritional needs. Between July 1943 and March 1944 there were no further increases in the output of aircraft.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The bombing of Hamburg in 1943 also produced impressive results. Attacks on Tiger I heavy tank production, and of that of 88mm guns, the most potent dual-purpose artillery piece in the "Wehrmacht", meant that output of both was "set back for months". On top of this, some 62 percent of the population was dehoused causing more difficulties. However, RAF Bomber Command allowed itself to be distracted by Harris' desire for a war winning blow, and attempted the fruitless missions to destroy Berlin and end the war by spring, 1944.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In October 1943, Harris urged the government to be honest with the public regarding the purpose of the bombing campaign. To Harris, his complete success at Hamburg confirmed the validity and necessity of his methods, and he urged that:


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: By contrast, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey found attacks on waterways, beginning 23 September with strikes against the Dortmund-Ems Canal and Mittelland Canal, produced tremendous traffic problems on the Rhine River. It had immediate effects on shipments of goods, and especially coal deliveries, upon which Germany's economy depended; with no more additional effort, by February 1945, rail transport (which competed for coal) had seen its shipments cut by more than half, and by March, "except in limited areas, the coal supply had been eliminated."


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The devastating bombing raids of Dortmund on 12 March 1945 with 1,108 aircraft – 748 Lancasters, 292 Halifaxes, 68 Mosquitos – was a record attack on a single target in the whole of World War II. More than 4,800 tonnage of bombs was dropped through the city centre and the south of the city and destroyed 98% of buildings.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Operation Chastise, better known as the Dambusters raid, was an attempt to damage German industrial production by crippling its hydro-electric power and transport in the Ruhr area. The Germans also built large-scale night-time decoys like the Krupp decoy site (German: Kruppsche Nachtscheinanlage) which was a German decoy-site of the Krupp steel works in Essen. During World War II, it was designed to divert Allied airstrikes from the actual production site of the arms factory.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Operation Hydra of August 1943 sought to destroy German work on long-range rockets but only delayed it by a few months. Subsequent efforts were directed against V-weapons launch sites in France.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In mid 1942, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) arrived in the UK and carried out a few raids across the English Channel. The USAAF Eighth Air Force's B-17 bombers were called the "Flying Fortresses" because of their heavy defensive armament of ten to twelve machine guns — eventually comprising up to thirteen heavy 12.7 mm calibre, "light barrel" Browning M2 guns per bomber — and armor plating in vital locations. In part because of their heavier armament and armor, they carried smaller bomb loads than British bombers. With all of this, the USAAF's commanders in Washington, D.C., and in Great Britain adopted the strategy of taking on the Luftwaffe head on, in larger and larger air raids by mutually defending bombers, flying over Germany, Austria, and France at high altitudes during the daytime. Also, both the U.S. Government and its Army Air Forces commanders were reluctant to bomb enemy cities and towns indiscriminately. They claimed that by using the B-17 and the Norden bombsight, the USAAF should be able to carry out "precision bombing" on locations vital to the German war machine: factories, naval bases, shipyards, railroad yards, railroad junctions, power plants, steel mills, airfields, etc.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In January 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, it was agreed RAF Bomber Command operations against Germany would be reinforced by the USAAF in a Combined Operations Offensive plan called Operation Pointblank. Chief of the British Air Staff MRAF Sir Charles Portal was put in charge of the "strategic direction" of both British and American bomber operations. The text of the Casablanca directive read: "Your primary object will be the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial, and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened." At the beginning of the combined strategic bombing offensive on 4 March 1943, 669 RAF and 303 USAAF heavy bombers were available.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In late 1943, the 'Pointblank' attacks manifested themselves in the Schweinfurt raids (first and second). Despite the use of combat boxes and the assembly ships to form them, formations of unescorted bombers were no match for German fighters, which inflicted a deadly toll. In despair, the Eighth halted air operations over Germany until a long-range fighter could be found in 1944; it proved to be the P-51 Mustang, which had the range to fly to Berlin and back.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: USAAF leaders firmly held to the claim of "precision bombing" of military targets for much of the war, and dismissed claims they were simply bombing cities. However the American Eighth Air Force received the first H2X radar sets in December 1943. Within two weeks of the arrival of these first six sets, the Eighth command gave permission for them to area bomb a city using H2X and would continue to authorize, on average, about one such attack a week until the end of the war in Europe.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In reality, the day bombing was "precision bombing" only in the sense that most bombs fell somewhere near a specific designated target such as a railway yard. Conventionally, the air forces designated as "the target area" a circle having a radius of 1,000 feet (300m) around the aiming point of attack. While accuracy improved during the war, Survey studies show that, overall, only about 20% of the bombs aimed at precision targets fell within this target area. In the fall of 1944, only seven percent of all bombs dropped by the Eighth Air Force hit within 1,000 feet of their aim point.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Nevertheless, the sheer tonnage of explosive delivered by day and by night was eventually sufficient to cause widespread damage, and forced Germany to divert military resources to counter it. The diversion of German fighter planes and anti-aircraft 88 mm artillery from the eastern and western fronts was a significant result of the Allied strategic bombing campaign.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: For the sake of improving USAAF firebombing capabilities, a mock-up German Village was built up and repeatedly burned down. It contained full-scale replicas of German residential homes. Firebombing attacks proved quite successful, in a series of attacks launched by the RAF and US forces in July 1943 on Hamburg, roughly 50,000 civilians were killed and large areas of the city destroyed.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: With the arrival of the brand-new Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy, command of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe was consolidated into the United States Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF). With the addition of the Mustang to its strength — and a major change in fighter tactics by the Eighth Air Force, meant to secure daylight air supremacy for the Americans over Germany from the start of 1944 onwards — the Combined Bomber Offensive was resumed. Planners targeted the "Luftwaffe" in an operation known as 'Big Week' (20–25 February 1944) and succeeded brilliantly – its major attacks came during the "Baby Blitz" period for the Luftwaffe over England, while losses for the Luftwaffe's day fighter forces were so heavy that both the twin-engined "Zerstörergeschwader" heavy fighter wings (the intended main anti-bomber force) and their replacement, single-engined "Sturmgruppen" of heavily armed Fw 190As became largely ineffective, clearing each force of bomber destroyers in their turn from Germany's skies throughout most of 1944. With such heavy losses of their primary means of defense against the USAAF's tactics, German planners were forced into a hasty dispersal of industry, with the day fighter arm never being able to fully recover in time.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: On 27 March 1944, the Combined Chiefs of Staff issued orders granting control of all the Allied air forces in Europe, including strategic bombers, to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, who delegated command to his deputy in SHAEF Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder. There was resistance to this order from some senior figures, including Winston Churchill, Harris, and Carl Spaatz, but after some debate, control passed to SHAEF on 1 April 1944. When the Combined Bomber Offensive officially ended on 1 April, Allied airmen were well on the way to achieving air superiority over all of Europe. While they continued some strategic bombing, the USAAF along with the RAF turned their attention to the tactical air battle in support of the Normandy Invasion. It was not until the middle of September that the strategic bombing campaign of Germany again became the priority for the USSTAF.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The twin campaigns—the USAAF by day, the RAF by night—built up into massive bombing of German industrial areas, notably the Ruhr, followed by attacks directly on cities such as Hamburg, Kassel, Pforzheim, Mainz and the often-criticized bombing of Dresden.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The first airstrikes against Romania occurred after Romania joined the Third Reich in June 1941 during their invasion of the Soviet Union. In the following two months, Soviet Air Forces conducted several attacks against the King Carol I Bridge, destroying one of its spans and damaging an oil pipeline. However, after the successful Axis powers Crimean Campaign and overall deterioration of the Soviet position, Soviet attacks against Romania ceased.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The USAAF first dropped bombs on Romania on 12 June 1942 during the HALPRO (Halverson project) raid against Ploiești (the first U.S. mission against a European target). Thirteen B-24 Liberator heavy bombers under the command of Col. Harry A. Halverson from Fayid, Egypt dropped eight bombs into the Black Sea, two onto Constanța, six onto Ploiești, six onto Teișani, and several onto Ciofliceni. In all, three people were killed and damage was minor. The bombing of Ploiești on 1 August 1943 (Operation Tidal Wave) was a far more serious affair. "Tidal Wave" heavily damaged four refineries and more lightly affected three; it damaged the Ploiești rail station but did not have much impact on the city itself. Câmpina was more severely damaged. 660 American aircrew were killed or captured, while petroleum exports exceeded pre-Tidal Wave levels by October. Around 100 civilians were killed and 200 wounded as a result of Operation Tidal Wave.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Anglo-American bombers first attacked Bucharest on 4 April 1944, aiming mainly to interrupt military transports from Romania to the Eastern Front. Bucharest stored and distributed much of Ploiești's refined oil products. The bombing campaign of Bucharest continued until August 1944, after which Romania joined the Allies following a coup by King Michael I against Ion Antonescu. The operations against Bucharest resulted in destroying thousands of buildings and killing or injuring over 9,000 people according to unofficial statistics.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Italy, first as an Axis member and later as a German-occupied country, was heavily bombed by Allied forces for all the duration of the war.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In Northern Italy, after small-scale bombings which mainly targeted factories, only causing little damage and casualties, RAF Bomber Command launched a first large-scale area bombing campaign on Milan, Turin and Genoa (the so-called 'industrial triangle') during the autumn of 1942. All three cities suffered heavy damage and hundreds of civilian casualties, although the effects were less disastrous than those suffered by German cities, mainly because Italian cities had centres made of brick and stone buildings, while German cities had centers made of wooden buildings. Milan and Turin were bombed again in February 1943; the heaviest raids were carried out in July (295 bombers dropped 763 tons of bombs on Turin, killing 792 people) and August (all three cities were bombed and a total of 843 bombers dropped 2,268 tons of bombs over Milan, causing about 900 casualties). These attacks caused widespread damage and prompted most of the cities' inhabitants to flee. The only other city in Italy to be subjected to area bombing was La Spezia, heavily bombed by the Bomber Command during April 1943, with slight casualties but massive damage (45% of the buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged, and just 25–30% remained undamaged).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: During 1944 and 1945 Milan, Turin and Genoa were instead bombed by USAAF bombers, which mainly targeted factories and marshalling yards; nonetheless, imprecision in bombings caused further destruction of vast areas. By the end of the war, about 30–40% of the buildings in each of the three cities were destroyed, and both in Milan and Turin less than half of the city remained undamaged. 2,199 people were killed in Turin and over 2,200 in Milan. Several other cities in northern Italy suffered heavy damage and casualties due to USAAF bombings, usually aimed at factories and marshalling yards but often inaccurate; among them Bologna (2,481 casualties), Padua (about 2,000 casualties), Rimini (98% of the city was destroyed or damaged), Treviso (1,600 killed in the bombing of 7 April 1944, 80% of the city destroyed or damaged), Trieste (463 casualties on 10 June 1944), Vicenza (317 casualties on 18 November 1944).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In Southern Italy, after small-scale bombings by the RAF (more frequent than in the north), USAAF started its bombing campaign in December 1942. The bombings mostly targeted harbour facilities, marshalling yards, factories and airports, but the inaccuracy of the attacks caused extensive destruction and civilian casualties; among the cities hit the hardest were Naples (6,000 casualties), Messina (more than one third of the city was destroyed, and only 30% remained untouched), Reggio Calabria, Foggia (thousands of casualties), Cagliari (416 inhabitants were killed in the bombings of February 1943, 80% of the city was damaged or destroyed), Palermo, Catania and Trapani (70% of the buildings were damaged or destroyed).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Central Italy was left untouched for the first three years of war, but from 1943 onwards it was heavily bombed by USAAF, with heavy damage (usually due to inaccuracy in bombing) to a number of cities, including Livorno (57% of the city was destroyed or damaged, over 500 people were killed in June 1943), Civitavecchia, Grosseto, Terni (1,077 casualties), Pisa (1,738 casualties), Pescara (between 2,200 and 3,900 casualties), Ancona (1,182 casualties), Viterbo (1,017 casualties) and Isernia (about 500 casualties on 11 September 1943).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Rome was bombed on several occasions; the historic centre and the Vatican were spared, but the suburbs suffered heavy damage and between 3,000 and 5,000 casualties. Florence also suffered some bombings in the outskirts (215 people were killed on 25 September 1943), while the historical centre was not bombed. Venice proper was never bombed.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In Dalmatia, the Italian enclave of Zara suffered extensive bombing, which destroyed 60% of the city and killed about 1,000 of its 20,000 inhabitants, prompting most of the population to flee to mainland Italy (the town was later annexed to Yugoslavia).


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Except for Rome, Venice, Florence, Urbino and Siena, damage to cultural heritage in Italy was widespread.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: German-occupied France contained a number of important targets that attracted the attention of the British, and later American bombing. In 1940, RAF Bomber Command launched attacks against German preparations for Operation Sealion, the proposed invasion of England, attacking Channel Ports in France and Belgium and sinking large numbers of barges that had been collected by the Germans for use in the invasion. France's Atlantic ports were important bases for both German surface ships and submarines, while French industry was an important contributor to the German war effort.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Before 1944, the Allies bombed targets in France that were part of the German war industry. This included raids such as those on the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt in March 1942 or the port facilities of Nantes in September 1943 (which killed 1,500 civilians). In preparation of Allied landings in Normandy and those in the south of France, French infrastructure (mainly rail transport) was intensively targeted by RAF and USAAF in May and June 1944. Despite intelligence provided by the French Resistance, many residential areas were hit in error or lack of accuracy. This included cities like Marseille (2,000 dead), Lyon (1,000 dead), Saint-Étienne, Rouen, Orléans, Grenoble, Nice, Paris and surrounds (1000+ dead), and so on. The Free French Air Force, operational since 1941, used to opt for the more risky skimming tactic when operating in national territory, to avoid civilian casualties. On 5 January 1945, British bombers struck the "Atlantic pocket" of Royan and destroyed 85% of this city. A later raid, using napalm was carried out before it was freed from Nazi occupation in April. Of the 3,000 civilians left in the city, 442 died.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: French civilian casualties due to Allied strategic bombing are estimated at about half of the 67,000 French civilian dead during Allied operations in 1942–1945; the other part being mostly killed during tactical bombing in the Normandy campaign. 22% of the bombs dropped in Europe by British and American air forces between 1940 and 1945 were in France. The port city of Le Havre had been destroyed by 132 bombings during the war (5,000 dead) until September 1944. It has been rebuilt by architect Auguste Perret and is now a World Heritage Site.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The first Soviet offensive bomber campaign was directed against the Romanian oilfields in the summer of 1941. In response to a German raid on Moscow on the night of 21–22 July 1941, Soviet Naval Aviation launched a series of seven raids against Germany, primarily Berlin, between the night of 7–8 August and 3–4 September. These attacks were undertaken by between four and fifteen aircraft—beginning on 11 August the new Tupolev TB-7—from the island of Saaremaa, base of the 1st Torpedo Air Regiment. (At least one raid of the 81st Air Division took off from Pushkin Airport.) Besides thirty tonnes of bombs, they also dropped leaflets with Joseph Stalin's defiant speech of 3 July. The Soviets sent a total of 549 long-range bombers over German territory in all of 1941.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: In March 1942 the strategic bombing arm of the Soviet Union was reorganized as the Long Range Air Force (ADD). It raided Berlin from 26 to 29 August and again on the night of 9–10 September with 212 planes. It raided Helsinki for the first time on 24 August, Budapest on 4–5 and 9–10 September and Bucharest on 13–14 September. The German-occupied Polish cities of Kraków and Warsaw were not exempt, but the bombers concentrated primarily on military targets. There were 1,114 sorties over Germany in 1942. In March 1943 there was a strategic shift: in preparation for the Kursk Offensive, the bombers were directed against the German railroads behind the front. In April the Long Range Air Force expanded to eight air corps and eleven independent divisions containing 700 planes. After the Kursk preparations, the Soviets turned their attention to administrative and industrial targets in East Prussia in April. With 920 aircraft taking part, they dropped 700 tonnes of bombs there. The largest Soviet bomb of the war, an 11,000-pound weapon, was dropped on Königsberg during one of these raids.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Throughout 1943, the Soviets attempted to give the impression of cooperation between their bombers and those of the West. In February 1944, they again shifted priority, this time towards terror bombing, with the goal of knocking Finland and Hungary out of the war. Helsinki was struck by 733 bombers on the night of 6–7 February, by 367 on the 15–16th and 850 on the 25–26th. A total of 2,386 tonnes of bombs were dropped. Budapest was hit four straight nights from 13 to 20 September with a total of 8,000 tonnes by 1,129 bombers. The Soviets flew 4,466 sorties into enemy territory in the year 1944. In December the Long Range Air Force was reorganized as the 18th Air Army.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The main task of the 18th Air Army was to support the final offensive against Germany, but it also undertook raids against Berlin, Breslau, Danzig and Königsberg. In total, 7,158 Soviet aircraft dropped 6,700 tonnes of bombs on Germany during the war, 3.1% of Soviet bomber sorties, 0.5% of all Allied "strategic" sorties against German-occupied territory and 0.2% of all bombs dropped on it.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: After the war, Marxist historians in the Soviet Union and East Germany claimed that the Soviet strategic bombing campaign was limited by moral qualms over bombing civilian centres. One early bombing theorist, Vasili Chripin, whose theories influenced the Soviet Union's first strategic bombing guidelines (1936) and the service regulations of 26 January 1940, drew back from terror bombing as advocated by Western theorists. The Spanish Civil War also convinced Soviet war planners that the air force was most effective when used in close cooperation with ground forces. Nonetheless, after the war, Marshal Vasili Sokolovsky admitted that the Soviets would have gladly launched a strategic bombing offensive had they the capability. In reality, the Soviets never geared aircraft production towards long-range bombers, beyond the small force of indigenously designed and produced Petlyakov Pe-8 four-engined "heavies", and so never had enough to mount an effective campaign. The land-based nature of warfare on the Eastern Front also required closer cooperation between the air forces and ground troops than did, for example, the defence of Great Britain.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Strategic bombing has been criticized on practical grounds because it does not work predictably. The radical changes it forces on a targeted population can backfire, including the counterproductive result of freeing non-essential labourers to fill worker shortages in war industries.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Much of the doubt about the effectiveness of the bomber war comes from the fact that German industrial production increased throughout the war. A combination of factors helped increase German war material output, these included; continuing development from production lines started before the war, limiting competing models of equipment, government enforced sharing of production techniques, a change in how contracts were priced and an aggressive worker suggestion program. At the same time production plants had to deal with a loss of experienced workers to the military, assimilating untrained workers, culling workers incapable of being trained, and utilizing unwilling forced labor. Strategic bombing failed to reduce German war production. There is insufficient information to ascertain how much additional potential industrial growth the bombing campaign may have curtailed. However, attacks on the infrastructure were taking place. The attacks on Germany's canals and railroads made transportation of materiel difficult.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: The Oil Campaign of World War II was, however, extremely successful and made a very large contribution to the general collapse of Germany in 1945. In the event, the bombing of oil facilities became Albert Speer's main concern; however, this occurred sufficiently late in the war that Germany would soon be defeated in any case.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: German insiders credit the Allied bombing offensive with crippling the German war industry. Speer repeatedly said both during and after the war that it caused crucial production problems. Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of the U-boat fleet ("U-waffe"), noted in his memoirs the failure to get the Type XXI U-boats into service was entirely the result of the air campaign. According to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Europe), despite bombing becoming a major effort, between December 1942 and June 1943, "The attack on the construction yards and slipways was not heavy enough to be more than troublesome" and the delays in delivery of Type XXIs and XXIIIs up until November 1944 "cannot be attributed to the air attack", however, "The attacks during the late winter and early spring of 1945 did close, or all but close, five of the major yards, including the great Blohm and Voss plant at Hamburg".


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Adam Tooze contends that many of the sources on bombing effectiveness are "highly self-critical after-the-battle analyses" by the former Western Allies. In his book "The Wages of Destruction", he makes the case that the bombing was effective. Richard Overy argues that the bombing campaign absorbed a significant proportion of German resources that could have been used on the Eastern Front; according to Overy, in 1943 and 1944, two-thirds of German fighters were being used to fend off bomber attacks, which Overy argues was a significant hindrance for the Luftwaffe as it prevented them from conducting bombing operations against the Soviets even though such an air campaign had caused considerable damage to the Soviets early in the war. Overy also reports that by the end of 1943, 75% of Flak 88mm guns were being used in air defence, preventing them from being used for anti-tank work on the Eastern Front despite their effectiveness in such a role. Overy also estimates that Britain spent about 7% of her war effort on bombing, which he concludes was not a waste of resources.


title: Strategic bombing during World War II

text: Although designed to "break the enemy's will", the opposite often happened. The British did not crumble under the German Blitz and other air raids early in the war. British workers continued to work throughout the war and food and other basic supplies were available throughout.