World War II

Farsighted military experts, including Colonel Billy Mitchell of the U. S. Army, predicted that the bomber plane would hold the key to victory in any future war. This forecast proved to be deadly accurate. At the beginning of World War II (1939-1945), the German Luftwaffe (air force) blasted its way across Europe in blitzkriegs (meaning “lightning wars”) that overran Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France.

The major air battle of World War II was the Battle of Britain (1940), in which British Spitfires and Hurricanes went into combat against Germany’s Messerschmitts. Superiority in the air helped the Allies win invasion battles in North Africa, Sicily, and France. Allied bombers, meanwhile, pounded German factories and cities.

In 1941, Japan used carrier-based airplanes to bomb the U. S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II. Later sea battles in the Pacific were won by U. S. naval air­planes rather than by the navy’s ships. Key U. S. warplanes included fighters such as the P-51 and bombers such as the B-24, of which 18,000 were built (more than any other World War II bomber). The surrender of Japan in 1945 came after U. S. bombers dropped two atomic bombs that devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

World War II also saw the first use of important new aviation technology, including radar, long-range rockets, cruise missiles, and jet planes. The first

TEC

AIRCRAFT DESIGNATION

Aircraft types are designated by a system of letters and numbers. The first letter indicates the aircraft’s type or role. F indicates a fighter plane, while H stands for helicopter.

The number after the first letter indi­cates an aircraft’s place in develop­ment history. After the F-7 Tigercat, for example, came the F-8 Bearcat and then the F-9 Panther. A second letter indicates a later, usually improved model. The F-14 Tomcat began life as the F-14A (1972); later models were the F-14B and F-14D. Some of the military aircraft desig­nations are:

A attack

B bomber

C transportation

E electronic warfare

F fighter

H helicopter

O observation

T trainer

U utility

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jet in combat was Germany’s Me-262. With a speed of almost 550 miles per hour (885 kilometers per hour), it was much faster than a propeller-driven fighter. The first American jet fighter to enter service was the XP-80 Shooting Star, first flown in January 1944.