Art, obsession, and identity
Aerial warfare has been around for much longer than modern aircraft have. More than 1,000 years ago, armies in China used incendiary kites known as fire crows to rain fire and debris upon their enemies. Since then, everything from kites to hot air balloons and airplanes have been used to inflict damage from above.
The 20th century saw more aerial warfare tactics than any era before or after. With the advent of unmanned drones and satellite surveillance systems, the days of B-52 bombers and dogfighters are over, but it can be argued that's for the best. In World War II alone, an estimated 2.7 million tons of explosives were dropped from airplanes flying high above their targets, and with no targeting systems to speak of, the collateral damage proved to be enormous. Close to one million civilian deaths were caused by the indiscriminate bombing campaigns carried out by both the Allied and Axis powers. Some of these events are well known, such as the unfathomably destructive atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while others remain in the shadows of history.
So, which bombing campaigns proved to be the most destructive ever? Read on to find out.
While bombs in some form or another have been around for centuries, the marriage of aerial warfare and explosives didn't come together in the modern age until the 1911 Italo-Turkish War. Monoplanes and airships were used by the Italian army to drop bombs on numerous Turkish targets.
The single most destructive bombing in world history was the United States bombing of Tokyo in March 1945. This firebombing campaign took more lives than either of the atomic bombs that would be dropped on Japan just a few months later.
Known as Operation Meetinghouse, the campaign consisted of no less than 279 Boeing Superfortress bomber planes that darkened the evening skies of Tokyo. The American bombs flattened the Japanese metropolis, taking the lives of an estimated 130,000 civilians and rendering over one million people homeless in the process.
The most infamous bombing attacks in history, also carried out by the United States Air Force, were of course the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first of these grandiose displays of existential power occurred in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
The Boeing Superfortress bomber nicknamed Enola Gay passed over Hiroshima on August 9, 1945, only five months after the apocalyptic bombing of Tokyo. The bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," took the lives of 20,000 Japanese soldiers and at least 100,000 civilians.
Just three days later, a second atomic bomb, known as "Fat Man," was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Fat Man flattened the southern Japanese city and took the lives of around 80,000 people, only a fraction of whom were members of the military.
For months and years afterwards, the widespread and long-term effects of radiation from both bombings took more and more lives, caused the rates of cancer to skyrocket, and saw innumerable birth defects in the next generations.
Prior to the bombings in Japan, many European cities were bombed into oblivion. In the case of Hamburg, Germany, doom came in the form of Operation Gomorrah.
Operation Gomorrah was executed in July 1943, by the Allied air forces of the United Kingdom and the United States. The city was almost entirely destroyed, and it claimed the lives of at least 37,000 civilians. The unusually dry climate in Hamburg that summer caused the Allies' incendiary bombs to spread at an alarming rate, creating a full-blown firestorm.
The infamous Nazi Blitzkrieg on London was one of the most drawn-out bombing campaigns in not just World War II, but all of history. Bombs were dropped on the English capital on a regular basis from September 1940 until May 1941.
Starting from the first day of the Blitz, September 7, London was relentlessly bombed for nearly 57 days straight. But thanks to London's comprehensive system of bomb shelters, a relatively low number of 40,000 lives were lost during the eight-month period of the Blitz. Still, the Blitz destroyed huge swaths of London, including over two million civilian homes.
One of the most controversial actions taken by the Allied forces during the Second World War was the February 1945 firebombing of Dresden. The largely civilian city served as the capital of the German state of Saxony, and modern scholars question the extent to which Dresden could be considered a military target.
The exact number of deaths that resulted from the firebombing are contested to this day, although the most commonly agreed-upon figure puts the number of casualties at around 25,000. Virtually all of these were civilian deaths.
The capital of the Third Reich was relentlessly bombed throughout the course of the war. The busiest of these campaigns, known simply as the Battle of Berlin, started in November 1943.
Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers descended upon the German capital for months between November 1943 and March 1944. Although Nazi anti-aircraft units brought down more planes than the RAF had anticipated, they still managed to destroy large parts of the city, including hundreds of thousands of homes.
One of the most successful and destructive RAF bomber campaigns against Germany targeted the small city of Pforzheim in February 1945. Pforzheim was chosen because it was, at the time, a hub for German jewelers and watchmakers. This, according to RAF intel, made the unsuspecting city a likely center for the production of precision instruments used in various tools of war.
No less than 90% of the city center, where most of the artisan workshops were believed to be, was destroyed by the RAF. Over 17,000 civilians were killed, and the population of the town dropped from the tens of thousands in 1939 to mere dozens in 1945.
Back in the Pacific Theater, earlier bombings were also commonplace. One of the most relentless campaigns was executed by the Imperial Japanese Air Services against the Chinese wartime capital metropolis of Chongqing.
Although Chongqing was regularly bombed throughout the war, much of the destruction was caused early on, in 1939. By the time World War II and the Sino-Japanese War came to their conclusions, over 30,000 civilians in the city had lost their lives.
One of a few major bombing campaigns in Europe that occurred between World War I and World War II took place in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.
The Basque town of Guernica, a communication hub for various anti-fascist resistance factions fighting against Francisco Franco's dictatorship, was bombed into oblivion by Franco's air force with the help of his friends in fascism, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Just under 2,000 people were killed, an estimated 400 of whom were civilians.
After World War II thoroughly proved the usefulness of aerial bomber squads, many of the proxy wars fought in Asia during the Cold War made extensive use of their airspace. One decisive bombing campaign of the Vietnam War and, by extension, the Cambodian Civil War was carried out by the United States Air Force between 1969 and 1970, and remained classified until 2000.
Codenamed Operation Menu, the US bombing of Cambodia targeted outposts of the socialist North Vietnamese Army and the communist Viet Cong. Operation Menu saw the first authorized use of the massive B-52 Superfortress bombers, infamous for their destructive technique of carpet bombing. Exact casualty numbers are still disputed, but it is agreed that around 4,000 Cambodian civilians perished.
Hot on the heels of Operation Menu was the much larger and far more destructive Operation Freedom Deal. Directly ordered by US President Richard Nixon, the campaign is remembered as one of the most aggressive and indiscriminate US operations in the Vietnam War.
The specifics regarding how many planes, how many bombs, and how many casualties were involved in Operation Freedom Deal remain difficult to pinpoint, thanks to its decades of classification. The civilian death toll, however, is suspected to be upwards of 100,000. This shocking number is supported by the Nixon administration's attitude towards the campaign. The former president was quoted talking to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, saying, "I want them to hit everything. I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there, and let's start giving them a little shock."
In 1972, back within the tentative borders of Vietnam, the United States put Operation Linebacker II into effect. Also known in the West as the Christmas bombings, the United States led the campaign between December 19 and December 29.
Officially described as a "maximum effort" operation against strategic targets in and around the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, the Christmas bombings became the largest bombing of a populated city since World War II. Many military targets were neutralized by the United States Air Force, but the operation also took the lives of almost 2,000 Vietnamese civilians.
One of the last major bombing campaigns of the 20th century, before the advent and popularization of drones, proved to be a decisive and destructive moment during the 1998-1999 Kosovo War.
In an attempt to pacify the Republic of Yugoslavia's ethnic cleansing of Albanians, NATO forces sent 1,000 aircraft into the region and bombed the area relentlessly until the Yugoslav forces agreed to leave Kosovo.
Sources: (War History Online) (The Peace Museum) (Online Military Education)
The deadliest bombings in military history
Bombs are the most destructive and least accurate tool of war
LIFESTYLE History
Aerial warfare has been around for much longer than modern aircraft have. More than 1,000 years ago, armies in China used incendiary kites known as fire crows to rain fire and debris upon their enemies. Since then, everything from kites to hot air balloons and airplanes have been used to inflict damage from above.
The 20th century saw more aerial warfare tactics than any era before or after. With the advent of unmanned drones and satellite surveillance systems, the days of B-52 bombers and dogfighters are over, but it can be argued that's for the best. In World War II alone, an estimated 2.7 million tons of explosives were dropped from airplanes flying high above their targets, and with no targeting systems to speak of, the collateral damage proved to be enormous. Close to one million civilian deaths were caused by the indiscriminate bombing campaigns carried out by both the Allied and Axis powers. Some of these events are well known, such as the unfathomably destructive atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while others remain in the shadows of history.
So, which bombing campaigns proved to be the most destructive ever? Read on to find out.