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Strategic bombing during World War II in Europe 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. [33] As the war continued to expand, bombing by both the Axis and the Allies increased significantly.
The final development of strategic bombing in World War II was the use of nuclear weapons. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States exploded nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 105,000 people and inflicting a psychological shock on the Japanese nation. On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan, stating:
The B-29 was the largest aircraft to have a significant operational role in World War II and remains the only aircraft in history to have ever used a nuclear weapon in combat. Air warfare was a major component in all theaters of World War II and, together with anti-aircraft warfare , consumed a large fraction of the industrial output of the ...
Area bombing is a form of strategic bombing. [2] It can serve several intertwined purposes: to disrupt the production of military materiel , to disrupt lines of communications , to divert the enemy's industrial and military resources from the primary battlefield to air defence and infrastructure repair, and to demoralise the enemy's population ...
A German World War II incendiary bomb remnant. Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs. In popular usage, any act in which an incendiary device is used to initiate a fire is often described as ...
A German World War II 1 kg incendiary bomb. Incendiary bombs were used extensively in World War II as an effective bombing weapon, often in a conjunction with high-explosive bombs. [8] Probably the most famous incendiary attacks are the bombing of Dresden and the bombing of Tokyo on 10 March 1945.
Precision bombing is the attempted aerial bombing of a target with some degree of accuracy, with the aim of maximising target damage or limiting collateral damage. [1] Its strategic counterpart is carpet bombing .
The first carpet bombing from air in history was the Bombing of Barcelona. 1,300 people were killed in 3 days, March 16–18, 1938 On 14 May 1940 at 1:22 pm, in the Rotterdam Blitz, German bombers set the entire inner city on fire with incendiary bombs, killing 814 inhabitants Wesel was 97% destroyed before it was finally taken by Allied troops in 1945