World War I

When World War I began in 1914, planes carried bombs in bags slung from cords. Bombs were even stuffed into the pockets of the pilot, who dropped them over the side. In 1915 civilians were bombed for the first time when German Zeppelin airships attacked British cities.

Large bombing planes also took to the skies, such as the British Handley Page 0/400 (1916), which had two engines and a crew of three and carried sixteen 112-pound (51-kilogram) bombs. The German Gotha airplane, which bombed London in 1917, was the first bomber to attack at night.

Bombing raids alarmed civilian pop­ulations, and air defenses were hurriedly improvised. Fighter planes chased the intruders. Bombers were forced to fly as

high to avoid barrage balloons on long cables and the fire of anti-aircraft guns from the ground.

When peace returned in 1918, the military showed little interest in the new bombing planes. One person who did believe in the bomber was Billy Mitchell, a U. S. Army general who advo­cated for a separate air force. Mitchell believed that, in future warfare, aerial bombing could weaken the resistance of civilians and wreck the enemy’s commu­nications and industries. Tests showed that a dive bomber could even sink a battleship. Mitchell’s ideas about devel­oping a strong, independent air force went unheeded, however. Until 1946, all U. S. military airplanes were under the control of the U. S. Navy, U. S. Marine Corps, or U. S. Army.

A New Generation

Until the mid-1930s, most air fleets were equipped with biplane bombers, which were very slow. The future lay with fast, all-metal, monoplane bombers. In 1935 Boeing produced the four-engine Model 299 that then became the B-17 Flying Fortress. The B-17 could fly at 295 miles per hour (475 kilometers per hour), at a height of over 30,000 feet (9,144 meters). Equipped with the new Norden bombsight, a B-17 could, it was claimed, “drop a bomb into a pickle barrel.” During the 1930s, Nazi Germany built a fleet of bombing planes. These aircraft were mostly fast, twin-engine
types such as the Heinkel He-111 and Dornier Do-17. Germany also built the Junkers Ju-87 Stuke dive bomber, which swooped down in a vertical dive to drop its bombs.

The new German bombers were tested in combat during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Japan also used “terror bombing” in attacks on cities in China in the same period.