Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of

fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames a ...

, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs. In popular usage, any act in which an incendiary device is used to initiate a fire is often described as a "firebombing". This article is concerned with aerial incendiary bombing as a military tactic; for non-military (almost always criminal) acts, see '' arson''. Although simple incendiary bombs have been used to destroy buildings since the start of gunpowder warfare,

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

saw the first use of

strategic bombing Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in total war with the goal of defeating the enemy by destroying its morale, its economic ability to produce and transport materiel to the theatres of military operations, or both. It is a systematica ...

from the air to damage the morale and economy of the enemy, such as the German

Zeppelin A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp ...

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 London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed b ...

, and many other British cities were firebombed during

the Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. Most large

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

cities were extensively firebombed starting in 1942, and almost all large Japanese cities were firebombed during the last six months of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. This technique makes use of small

incendiary bomb Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices, incendiary munitions, or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire (and sometimes used as anti-personnel weaponry), that use materials such as napalm, t ...

s (possibly delivered by a cluster bomb such as the

Molotov bread basket The RRAB-3 (, "rotationally dispersing aviation bomb"), nicknamed the Molotov bread basket (), was a Soviet-made droppable bomb dispenser that combined a large high-explosive charge with a cluster of incendiary bombs. It was used against the c ...

). 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 bomb A blockbuster bomb or cookie was one of several of the largest conventional bombs used in World War II by the Royal Air Force (RAF). The term ''blockbuster'' was originally a name coined by the press and referred to a bomb which had enough explo ...

s, which blew out windows and roofs and exposed the interior of buildings to the incendiary bombs, is 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 The Coventry Blitz ( blitz: from the German word ''Blitzkrieg'' meaning "lightning war" ) or Coventration of the city was a series of bombing raids that took place on the British city of Coventry. The city was bombed many times during the Sec ...

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. These were: the use of pathfinder aircraft with electronic aids to navigate, to mark the targets before the main bomber raid; and the use of high explosive bombs and

air-mine A blockbuster bomb or cookie was one of several of the largest conventional bombs used in World War II by the Royal Air Force (RAF). The term ''blockbuster'' was originally a name coined by the press and referred to a bomb which had enough expl ...

s 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 Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 of the periodic ta ...

and

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

powders, and those made of

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

. 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: The tactical innovation of the

bomber stream The bomber stream was a saturation attack tactic developed by the Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command to overwhelm the nighttime German aerial defences of the Kammhuber Line during World War II. The Kammhuber Line consisted of three layers of ...

was developed by the RAF to overwhelm the

aerial defenses of the

Kammhuber Line The Kammhuber Line was the Allied name given to the German night air defense system established in July 1940 by Colonel Josef Kammhuber. It consisted of a series of control sectors equipped with radars and searchlights and an associated night fig ...

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. 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 Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

on the night of 13/14 of February 1945 by two waves of the RAF Bomber Command's main force, involved their bombs being 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 The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

(USAAF) officially only bombed precision targets over Europe, but for example, when 316 B-17 Flying Fortresses bombed

in a follow-up raid at around noon on 14 February 1945, because of clouds the later waves bombed using

H2X radar H2X, officially known as the AN/APS-15, was an American ground scanning radar system used for blind bombing during World War II. It was a development of the British H2S radar, the first ground mapping radar to be used in combat. It was also know ...

for targeting.Davis p.504 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.Taylor p. 366. Taylor compares this 40% mix with the

raid on Berlin The Raid on Berlin took place in October 1760 during the Third Silesian War (part of the Seven Years' War) when Austrian and Russian forces occupied the Prussian capital of Berlin for several days. After raising money from the city, and with the ...

on 3 February where the ratio was 10% incendiaries This was quite a common mix when the USAAF anticipated cloudy conditions over the target.Davis pp. 425,504 In its attacks on Japan, the USAAF abandoned its

precision bombing Precision bombing refers to the attempted aerial bombing of a target with some degree of accuracy, with the aim of maximising target damage or limiting collateral damage. An example would be destroying a single building in a built up area causing ...

method that was used in Europe before and adopted a policy of

saturation bombing Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is a large area bombardment done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. The phrase evokes the image of explosions completely covering an area, in th ...

, using incendiaries to burn Japanese-held cities including

Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the ninth-most populous Chinese city an ...

, and the cities of the Japanese home islands. These tactics were used to devastating effect with many urban areas burned out. The first incendiary raid by

B-29 Superfortress The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is an American four-engined propeller-driven heavy bomber, designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 F ...

bombers was against Kobe on 4 February 1945, with 69 B-29s arriving over the city at an altitude of , dropping 152 tons of incendiaries and 14 tons of fragmentation bombs to destroy about . The next mission was another high altitude daylight incendiary raid against

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

on 25 February when 172 B-29s destroyed around of the snow-covered city, dropping 453.7 tons of mostly incendiaries with some fragmentation bombs. Changing to low-altitude night tactics to concentrate the fire damage while minimizing the effectiveness of fighter and artillery defenses, the

Operation Meetinghouse On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city. This attack was code-named Operation Meetinghouse by the USAAF and is known as the Great To ...

raid 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 , mostly using the E-46 cluster bomb which released 38 M-69 oil-based incendiary bombs at an altitude of . A lesser number of M-47 incendiaries was dropped: the M-47 was a 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. 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 of the city were destroyed and 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting

conflagration A conflagration is a large fire. Conflagrations often damage human life, animal life, health, and/or property. A conflagration can begin accidentally, be naturally caused (wildfire), or intentionally created (arson). A very large fire can produc ...

, more than the immediate deaths of either the

atomic bombings The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...

of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 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.

Popular culture

* The 1967 semi-autobiographical short story'' Grave of the Fireflies (short story), Grave of the Fireflies'' follows events after the firebombing of Kobe. It was eventually adapted into a Grave of the Fireflies, 1988 film of the same name. *The middle portion of historical fantasy novel ''Teito Monogatari'', is set during the period of the Allied firebombings in Japan. This section of the novel was eventually adapted into the film ''Tokyo: The Last War''. * Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novel ''Slaughterhouse-Five'' is partially based on his personal experience of the Bombing of Dresden, Dresden firestorm. * The novel ''Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'' by Jonathan Safran Foer contains narrative threads dealing with the Bombing of Dresden.

Notes

References

*Davis, Richard G.
Bombing the European Axis Powers. A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive 1939–1945
' PDF. Alabama: Air University Press, 2006 *Harris, Arthur. Bomber Offensive, (First edition Collins 1947), Pen & Sword military classics 2005; . *Taylor, Fredrick; Dresden Tuesday 13 February 1945, Pub Bloomsbury (First Pub 2004, Paper Back 2005). . {{World War II city bombing Aerial bombing Aerial warfare strategy Incendiary weapons Firebombings,

Tactics

Popular culture

See also

Notes

References