Airport Bombing Research Paper

The attacks on Hamburg were not a turning point of the war as Bomber Command’s fortunes had completely disappeared once they started targeting Berlin, where their loss rates peaked to unacceptably high levels. Therefore Gee made less of an impact in assisting the Allied strategic bombing of Germany compared to Window. However the impact on Hamburg caused by Window was relatively short-lived because the Germans countered. On the other hand the long range escort fighters, disposable fuel tanks and The Thousand Bomber raids had a long-lived impact. The P-51 Mustang was an important aircraft in the war that had an American airframe and a British Rolls-Royce ‘Merlin’ Engine. Disposable fuel tanks, which increased the Allied fighter’s range were loaded onto the P-51 Mustang and by March 1944, the modified Mustang had a 1800 mile armed range and could fly with the bombers to Berlin and back. Richard Ovary said ‘The long-range escort fighter transformed the air war overnight.’ Lastly the thousand-bomber raid on 30th to 31st May 1942 against Cologne saw the destruction of a third of the inner zone of Cologne along with the destroying of 20000 houses and the evacuation of 200000 people.

A few days later Lovell and his crew take off on the Apollo 13 mission. At first all is well until the second oxygen tank explodes, causing many problems for the crew; the most potent problem being that the crew was losing oxygen fast. Luckily, due to much ingenuity by the crew and mission control, the crew is able to arrive safely to earth without the deaths of any astronauts.

With Its commission to the fleet, Enola Gay preformed a test mission in preparation for its mission the next morning. The mission would be called “Operation Centerboard 1”, this type of bombing mission had never been preformed, the bomb had never existed or had a full functional test, and the hopes of ending the war hung in the balance of this mission (Museum, 2011). The Enola Gay and its weather plane escort took off from North Field airbase, Tinian Island at 0245Z 06 August 1945, Operation Centerboard 1 was on a course for history (Museum, 2011). The Enola Gay climbed to 30,000 feet in preparation for the bombing raid. The bomb was dropped at 0915Z over Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb hit the intended target 43 seconds later (Museum, 2011). The airplane preformed the escape maneuvers and started the return to base. The detonation mushroom cloud climbed to 40,000 feet and was visible by the crew for 360 miles away from the impact sight(Museum, 2011). The crew safely landed at Tinian island 1438Z performing the mission exactly as planned (Museum, 2011).

They were part of the raid on an enemy airfield and factories in Romily sue Seine. The 91st had planned a massive scale attack to take out some of Germany’s best fighter battalions. During that mission, the bombs that were dropped destroyed over 100 enemy fighter planes, multiple hangars, and it was reported that it blew up the officer’s mess hall during lunchtime. This was a huge victory for the allies but it came at a cost for the 91st bombing group, as German fighters reportedly shot six of the B-17’s down. The mission was over 6 hours and the crews were over enemy territory for over two and a half hours. The crew’s journal and flight log cited that they were followed by groups of Luftwaffe fighters and relentlessly attacked for over an

Succumbing to hunger and thirst on the fifth day, they killed the dog for nourishment. Two of the crewmen died on the sixth day. On the seventh, the remaining crew reached land.

Four out of the nine who were on the Hunley escaped. Three of them were Charles Hasker, Charles Sprague, and John Payne. The other five were not as fortunate. They quickly found the Hunley, removed it from the bottom of the ocean, buried the five bodies, cleaned it up, and sent it back to work.

On the morning of August 6 1945 with Germany already defeated months earlier in May, a plane named Enola Gay, a B-29 superfortress was carrying a payload that would ultimately be the most controversial ending to a war. This was no ordinary payload, for this was

At least 31 were killed in twin bombings which targeted a popular ice cream parlor in Baghdad, Iraq and another area in downtown on May 30, according to Iraqi officials.

The morale of the German people was not affected enough to effect their war-waging capacity. "Neither a maintenance of productivity nor a rebuilding of industry could have been achieved by means of compulsive but only by virtue of the voluntary response of German workers" . <br><br>It was assumed that bombing raids would be made in the daylight. In August 1940 German bombers suffered heavily in daylight even though they were escorted. This helped to confirm to Bomber Command that night bombing was the best policy. Bomber Command flew night missions over Germany during the winter of 1940-1941 in the belief their bombs had fallen within about 300 yards of their targets. This figure was plainly wrong, a new assumption was made. The R.A.F decided the average error was closer to 1000 yards, which meant that Bomber Command could not be expected to hit targets as small as oil facilities, until they had been equipped with vastly improved navigational aids. The U.S.A.A.F opposed Bomber Commands view, they believed accurate bombing could only be achieved during the day. They assumed unescorted bombers flying in well-designed formations could penetrate the German lines. On 14th October 1943, 60 out 291 flying fortresses were shot down by German fighters during the last major raid on Schweinfurt. The formation had been obliged to fly 400 miles without fighter cover. The Americans suspended daylight

Wednesday evening June 3, aboard the carrier Hornet, Lieutenant Commander John Waldron gathered the members of Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8) for a briefing. VT-8 was flying the obsolete 1930’s vintage Douglas Devastators torpedo planes. They had not received a lot of flight training in their ten months in the navy. Most members had never taken off of a carrier carrying a torpedo but just six weeks earlier they had watch Doolittle’s B-25 bombers take off the Hornet for the raid on Tokyo. If Doolittle’s pilots could take off in a bomber, the members of VT-8 could handle taking off with a torpedo. A Japanese task force was threatening Midway Island and a battle to stop them was expected to occur tomorrow. Waldron told them not to worry about navigation but to just follow him. Waldron finished his briefing by

|the cockpit, had failed. Lancaster, the captain, was pulled out of his seat by the air and forced head first out of the cockpit. This |

On August 6th, 1945, on a clear, sunny day, there was a single American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, piloted by 29 year-old air-force colonel named Paul W. Tibbets,

In June, people wake up to get ready and go to work. However, most of the people worked in a huge office space building. It was about 120 stories tall. In the building, there were security guards in the front checking people in. A man walked by and noticed there were some new people. He trotted up and welcomed them to the huge building.

Few hours before, in the Tinian Island, Colonel Paul Tibbets gave the final update to the crew before the destruction of Hiroshima. Tibbets was the pilot of the Enola Gay and joining him was Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the weapon plane with few more other crew members. At 2:45 am, the Enola Gay carrying the world’s first atomic bomb, nicknamed the ‘Little Boy’ takes off to the night sky. As the crew get closer to Hiroshima, the plane climbs to the altitude of 31,000 ft. and

Meanwhile, the group survived the landing and avoided any German detection, they landed miles from the planned target site. After traveling for about five days, the Gunnerside group connected with the Swallow