Night bomber
A night bomber is a bomber aircraft intended specifically for carrying out bombing missions at night. The term is now mostly of historical significance. Night bombing began in World War I and was widespread during World War II. A number of modern aircraft types are designed primarily for nighttime bombing, but air forces no longer refer to them as night bombers. More common terms today include interdictor and strike fighter, and such aircraft tend to have all-weather, day-or-night capabilities.
World War I
Strategic bombing and night bombing were new in World War I, and there was much experimentation at night with aircraft such as the Gotha G.IV, Gotha G.V, Handley Page Type O, and various giant airplanes such as the Riesenflugzeuge and the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets. Navigation was difficult and precision was almost nonexistent but the psychological effect was strong. Night bombing worked as a terror weapon.
Prior to the introduction of
Interwar period and World War II
As aircraft capabilities grew, so did their defensive firepower. By the mid-1930s, opinions were changing and the idea of daylight raids of aircraft providing their own self-defense came to the fore. In practice these aircraft proved entirely vulnerable to modern fighter aircraft and were rapidly returned to the night bombing role. However, these aircraft had not been designed for night navigation, and were generally lacking any effectiveness in these missions:
I don't think we realized at the time that our equipment wasn't really up to it. They'd forgotten to design or produce any navigation equipment, so the Wellington bomber, which was intended to be a day bomber, had to operate at night because it was so vulnerable during the day. It had virtually the same equipment that the Tiger Moth had, with one exception—the Wellington had a loop aerial. Here we were flying 500 or 600 miles over enemy territory, trying to locate a target in total blackout, often with cloud below us and a lot of industrial haze. It's not surprising that our bombers were 5, 10 miles away. There was no bomber stream. We were largely on our own, perhaps 10 or 14 aircraft at intervals.
- —John Gee, Bomber Command pilot[2]
The
The USAAF also applied the same concept with the
References
- ^ Keith Middlemas and Anthony John Lane Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969, p. 722.
- ^ "Reforming the Command", Operations, Personal Stories, The Bomber Command Association
- ^ B-29s Victory in the Pacific
- ^ SUICIDE ATTACKS ON B-29s