Firebombing
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The United States Army drops
Napalm on suspected
Viet Cong positions in 1965.
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.
Although simple incendiary bombs have been used to destroy buildings since the start of gunpowder warfare,
World War I saw the first use of
strategic bombing from the air to damage the morale and economy of the enemy. Such as the German
Zeppelin air raids conducted on London during the Great War. The Chinese wartime capital of
Chongqing was firebombed by the Imperial Japanese starting in early 1939.
London,
Coventry, and many other British cities were firebombed during
the Blitz by
Nazi Germany. Most large German cities were extensively firebombed starting in 1942, and almost
all large Japanese cities were firebombed during the last six months of
World War II.
This technique makes use of small
incendiary bombs (possibly delivered by a
cluster bomb such as the
Molotov bread basket[1]).
If a fire catches, it could spread, taking in adjacent buildings that
would have been largely unaffected by a high explosive bomb. This is a
more effective use of the payload that a bomber could carry.
The use of incendiaries alone does not generally start uncontrollable
fires where the targets are roofed with nonflammable materials such as
tiles or slates. The use of a mixture of bombers carrying high explosive
bombs, such as the British
blockbuster bombs,
which blew out windows and roofs and exposed the interior of buildings
to the incendiary bombs, are much more effective. Alternatively, a
preliminary bombing with conventional bombs can be followed by
subsequent attacks by incendiary carrying bombers.
Tactics
Early in World War II many British cities were firebombed. Two particularly notable raids were the
Coventry Blitz on 14 November 1940, and the
blitz on London
on the night of 29 December/30 December 1940, which was the most
destructive raid on London during the war with much of the destruction
caused by fires started by incendiary bombs. During the Coventry Blitz
the Germans pioneered several innovations which were to influence all
future strategic bomber raids during the war.
[2]
These were: The use of pathfinder aircraft with electronic aids to
navigate, to mark the targets before the main bomber raid; The use of
high explosive bombs and
air-mines
coupled with thousands of incendiary bombs intended to set the city
ablaze. The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped high explosive
bombs, the intent of which was to knock out the utilities (the water
supply, electricity network and gas mains), and to crater the road -
making it difficult for the fire engines to reach fires started by the
successive waves of bombers. The follow-up waves dropped a combination
of high explosive and incendiary bombs. There were two types of
incendiary bombs: those made of
magnesium and
iron powders, and those made of
petroleum.
The high-explosive bombs and the larger air-mines were not only
designed to hamper the Coventry fire brigade, they were also intended to
damage roofs, making it easier for the incendiary bombs to fall into
buildings and ignite them. As
Sir Arthur Harris, commander of
RAF Bomber Command, wrote after the war:
In the early days of bombing our notion, like that of the Germans,
was to spread an attack out over the whole night, thereby wearing down
the morale of the civilian population. The result was, of course, that
an efficient fire brigade could tackle a single load of incendiaries,
put them out, and wait in comfort for the next to come along; they might
also be able to take shelter when a few high explosives bombs were
dropping. ... But it was observed that when the Germans did get an
effective concentration, ... then our fire brigades had a hard time; if a
rain of incendiaries is mixed with high explosives bombs there is a
temptation for the fireman to keep his head down. The Germans again and
again missed their chance, as they did during the London blitz that I
watched from the roof of the Air Ministry, of setting our cities ablaze
by a concentrated attack. Coventry was adequately concentrated in point
of space, but all the same there was little concentration in point of
time, and nothing like the fire tornadoes of Hamburg or Dresden ever
occurred in this country. But they did do us enough damage to teach us
the principle of concentration, the principle of starting so many fires
at the same time that no fire fighting services, however efficiently and
quickly they were reinforced by the fire brigades of other towns could
get them under control.
The
tactical innovation of the
bomber stream was developed by the RAF to overwhelm the
German aerial defenses of the
Kammhuber Line
during World War II to increase the RAF's concentration in time over
the target. But after the lessons learned during the Blitz, the tactic
of dropping a high concentration of bombs over the target in the
shortest time possible became standard in the RAF as it was more
effective than a longer raid.
[3] For example, during the Coventry Blitz on the night of 14/15 November 1940, 515 Luftwaffe bombers, many flying more than one
sortie
against Coventry, delivered their bombs over a period of time lasting
more than 10 hours. In contrast, the much more devastating raid on
Dresden
on the night of 13/14 of February 1945 by two waves of the RAF Bomber
Command's main force, involved the bomb released at 22:14, with all but
one of the 254
Lancaster
bombers releasing their bombs within two minutes, and the last one
released at 22:22. The second wave of 529 Lancasters dropped all of
their bombs between 01:21 and 01:45. This means that in the first raid,
on average, one Lancaster dropped a full load of bombs every half a
second and in the second larger raid that involved more than one RAF
bomber Group, one every three seconds.
The
United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) officially only bombed precision targets over Europe, but for example, when 316
B-17 Flying Fortresses bombed
Dresden in a follow-up raid at around noon on 14 February 1945, because of clouds the later waves bombed using
H2X radar for targeting.
[4] The mix of bombs to be used on the Dresden raid was about 40% incendiaries, much closer to the RAF city-busting mix than the
bomb-load usually used by the Americans in precision bombardments.
[5] This was quite a common mix when the USAAF anticipated cloudy conditions over the target.
[6]
In its attacks on Japan, the USAAF abandoned its
precision bombing method that was used in Europe before and adopted a policy of
saturation bombing,
using incendiaries to burn Japanese cities. These tactics were used to
devastating effect with many urban areas burned out. The first
incendiary raid by
B-29 Superfortress bombers was against
Kobe
on 4 February 1945, with 69 B-29s arriving over the city at an altitude
of 24,500 to 27,000 ft (7,500 to 8,200 m), dropping 152 tons of
incendiaries and 14 tons of fragmentation bombs to destroy about 57.4
acres (23.2 ha). The next mission was another high altitude daylight
incendiary raid against
Tokyo
on 25 February when 172 B-29s destroyed around 643 acres (260 ha) of
the snow-covered city, dropping 453.7 tons of mostly incendiaries with
some fragmentation bombs.
[7]
Changing to low-altitude night tactics to concentrate the fire damage
while minimizing the effectiveness of fighter and artillery defenses,
the
Operation Meetinghouse raid
[8]
carried out by 279 B-29s raided Tokyo again on the night of 9/10 March,
dropped 1,665 tons of incendiaries from altitudes of 5,000 to 9,000 ft
(1,500 to 2,700 m), mostly using the 500-pound (230 kg) E-46 cluster
bomb which released 38
M-69 oil-based incendiary bombs at an altitude of 2,500 ft (760 m). A lesser number of
M-47 incendiaries
was dropped: the M-47 was a 100-pound (45 kg) jelled-gasoline and white
phosphorus bomb which ignited upon impact. In the first two hours of
the raid, 226 of the attacking aircraft or 81% unloaded their bombs to
overwhelm the city's fire defenses.
[9]
The first to arrive dropped bombs in a large X pattern centered in
Tokyo's working class district near the docks; later aircraft simply
aimed near this flaming X. Approximately 15.8 square miles (4,090 ha) of
the city were destroyed and 100,000 people are estimated to have died
in the resulting
conflagration, more than the immediate deaths of either the
atomic bombings of
Hiroshima or
Nagasaki.
[10]
After this raid, the USAAF continued with low-altitude incendiary raids
against Japan's cities, destroying an average of 40% of the built-up
area of 64 of the largest cities.
[11]
Popular culture
See also
Notes
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.
Firebombing in Braunschweig, Germany, 15 October 1944
Early in World War II many British cities were firebombed. Two particularly notable raids were the Coventry Blitz on 14 November 1940, and the blitz on London on the night of 29 December/30 December 1940, which was the most destructive raid on London during the war with much of the destruction caused by fires started by incendiary bombs. During the Coventry Blitz the Germans pioneered several innovations which were to influence all future strategic bomber raids during the war.[2] These were: The use of pathfinder aircraft with electronic aids to navigate, to mark the targets before the main bomber raid; The use of high explosive bombs and air-mines coupled with thousands of incendiary bombs intended to set the city ablaze. The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped high explosive bombs, the intent of which was to knock out the utilities (the water supply, electricity network and gas mains), and to crater the road - making it difficult for the fire engines to reach fires started by the successive waves of bombers. The follow-up waves dropped a combination of high explosive and incendiary bombs. There were two types of incendiary bombs: those made of magnesium and iron powders, and those made of petroleum. The high-explosive bombs and the larger air-mines were not only designed to hamper the Coventry fire brigade, they were also intended to damage roofs, making it easier for the incendiary bombs to fall into buildings and ignite them. As Sir Arthur Harris, commander of RAF Bomber Command, wrote after the war:Charred remains of Japanese civilians after a Bombing of Tokyo
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