Able to crossing entire oceans, evading enemy defenses, after which striking a goal so precisely it may well place 1,000 kilos of explosives through an enemy’s window, the bomber is one of the crucial powerful and enduring weapons in modern warfare.
While the mission is similar, it wasn’t all the time like this: today’s bombers, just like the highly secretive B-21 Raider, are the belief of a century-old dream. The achievement of this dream, nevertheless, comes with a steep price that few countries can afford.
That is the history of the bomber.
The Dawn of the Bomber
The primary use of an aircraft to bomb targets on the bottom was in 1911, when Italian pilot Giulio Gavotti flung bombs by hand at troops of the Ottoman Empire. He was followed in 1912 by Bulgarian pilots Radul Milkov and Prodan Tarakchiev, who threw hand grenades at their opponents within the First Balkan War. Although crude and largely ineffective, airplanes could deliver explosives much farther than contemporary artillery. Airplanes were also so latest that the one anti-aircraft weapons were rifles and pistols, and no troops were yet trained to properly shoot at aerial targets.
As airplanes rapidly improved, their ability to fly farther and deliver heavier explosives increased. The beginning of World War I in 1914 saw either side construct up bomber forces, with the Allies preferring smaller, fixed-wing tactical biplanes just like the French Breguet 14 and British de Havilland DH-4, and the Germans favoring long-ranged Zeppelin airships that delivered bombs as far-off as England. World War I also demonstrated the bomber’s vulnerability to a brand new enemy: the fighter, a smaller, faster aircraft optimized for air-to-air combat.
World War I split bombing into two fields: tactical and strategic bombing. Tactical bombing involved dropping bombs on the front line, or not removed from it, with the intention of blasting enemy troop concentrations or ships at sea. This kind of bombing would have a tactical effect on the battlefield, affecting individual battles. Strategic bombing, alternatively, targeted the enemy’s industry, energy production, and railroads, the strategically vital, evenly defended targets that kept the frontline well supplied. In some cases—equivalent to the bombing of London by airships—the goal was the need of civilians, with bombs dropped on cities meant to terrify people on the bottom a lot they might demand the top of the war.
World War II
During World War II, the bomber achieved previously unimaginable levels of power. The brand new generation of bombers combined single-wing monoplane designs with more powerful radial engines, making faster, higher flying planes with much larger bomb loads. Bombers dropped their bombs using dedicated mechanical bombsights that used the aircraft altitude and speed to calculate the impact point of a string of bombs, an enormous leap simply eyeballing the goal.
Bombers went into motion almost immediately upon the beginning of the war, and the necessity to make up for losses and the provision of recent technology meant they, like all aircraft types, were subjected to a supercharged revolution. Air forces equivalent to the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) began the war in 1940 with two-engine bombers equivalent to the B-25 Mitchell, with a top speed of 272 miles per hour, a bomb load of 4,500 kilos, and a maximum altitude of 24,200 feet. By the top of the war, the essential USAAF bomber was the B-29 Superfortress, with a top speed of 357 miles per hour, a bomb load of 12,000 kilos, and a max altitude of 31,000 feet.
Despite advances in speed and power, bombers were still notoriously inaccurate, especially as bombing altitudes grew. A raid against a sprawling train yard in Europe might require scores of bombers, with the hope that a minimum of a handful would land bombs close enough to do some damage. Bombers also needed to face ground fire, the famous “flak,” and defending fighters, complicating attacks and sometimes reducing accuracy.
Different countries used bombers in other ways. Germany used bombers for strategic and tactical bombing early on, with bombers undertaking the Battle of Britain, a strategic mission, and air support of German ground forces through the Blitzkrieg, a tactical mission. But Germany was never in a position to construct a real strategic bomber that would bomb Soviet tank factories east of the Ural mountains or the continental United States. Japan developed only tactical bombers for tactical missions. The USA and United Kingdom, separated from the European mainland and having to fight their way across the Pacific, were forced to develop each strategic and tactical bomber forces.
Bombers also delivered the war’s ultimate weapon: the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb contained more explosive power in a single bomb than tons of of bombers could deliver. While a daily B-29 could deliver six tons of bombs as much as 1,500 miles from its base, the Enola Gay, the B-29 that destroyed Hiroshima, immediately delivered the equivalent of 15,000 tons (15 kilotons) of TNT explosive. The atomic bomb solved the bomber’s accuracy problem, allowing a single bomber to simply destroy a European train yard … and town next to it. The bomber emerged from World War II essentially the most powerful weapon of all—and of all time.
The Bomber Today
The Cold War saw the rapid adoption of jet engines to bombers, allowing bombers equivalent to the American Convair B-58 Hustler and Soviet Tupolev Tu-22 Blinder to fly at supersonic speeds (faster than the speed of sound, which is often between 750 and 1,500 miles per hour). The event of hydrogen bombs, that are exponentially more powerful than atomic bombs, made it possible for a single bomber to utterly devastate large swaths of enemy territory and kill tens of millions of individuals in a single mission. The B-2 Spirit bomber can carry as much as 16 B83 thermonuclear bombs, each with an explosive yield of 1,200 kilotons. A single B83 dropped on Recent York City would kill 1.8 million people immediately and injure one other 3.3 million.
One other innovation to dramatically impact bombers is radar evasion, or stealth technology. Through careful shaping of an aircraft’s nose, fuselage, wings, and stabilizers, a bomber can present a smaller presence on enemy radar, or under the most effective circumstances, make it invisible. This has offset many postwar advances in air-defense technology, particularly radars and radar-guided missiles, allowing a bomber to slide past enemy defenses.
The event of cruise missiles has also had a significant effect on bombers. The low-flying, turbojet-powered weapons typically fly autonomously for tons of of miles, allowing non-stealthy bombers to launch removed from their targets, completely avoiding enemy defenses. This has allowed older bombers, equivalent to the B-52 Stratofortress or the Tupolev Tu-95, to still remain viable at the same time as enemy defenses turn into more sophisticated.
Bombers are very expensive, and today only the USA, Russia, and China operate heavy bombers. The U.S. Air Force operates three bombers, the B-1 Lancer, B-2 Spirit, and B-52 Stratofortress, while Russia operates the Tu-22M “Backfire” and Tu-160 “Blackjack” bombers. The brand new U.S. B-21 Raider bomber will replace the B-1 and B-2 starting within the early 2030s. China flies updated versions of the updated H-6 bomber and is reportedly working on a brand new stealth bomber, the H-20. Russia has been working on a brand new bomber, PAK-DA, however the war in Ukraine and international sanctions means it likely lacks the resources and funds to complete it.
The Takeaway
Bombers have turn into dramatically simpler within the last 100 years. The power to fly across continents, use each conventional and nuclear weapons, and be recallable with an easy message to a human crew makes for a helpful tool for a superpower. Those countries that fly bombers form an elite club, one whose members can dish out immense devastation—at immense cost.