Strategic Bombing - Strategic Bombing Events

Strategic Bombing Events

Among the controversial instances of strategic bombing (and it should be noted that there is still significant controversy over whether all of these events even constitute strategic bombing, as opposed to other forms, such as terror bombing or tactical bombing) are:

  • Strategic bombing of "uncivilized tribes" during the British mandate of Iraq
  • Spanish Civil War
    • The Bombing of Guernica: the first aerial bombardment in history in which a civilian population was targeted with the apparent intent of producing civilian casualties.
  • World War II
    • The Japanese bombing of Wuhan
    • The Japanese bombing of Chongqing
    • The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
    • The German bombing of Warsaw
    • The German bombing of Rotterdam
    • German attacks on the UK during The Blitz and afterwards, through the V-1 and V-2 attacks in the last year of the war.
    • The German bombing of Belgrade
    • The German bombing of Moscow.
    • Allied bombing of Hamburg
    • Allied bombing of Berlin
    • Allied bombing of Dresden
    • Allied bombing of Milan
    • United States bombing of Tokyo
    • United States bombing of Kobe
    • United States atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  • Vietnam War
    • United States bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail
    • United States bombing of Hanoi
    • United States bombing of Cambodia
    • United States bombing of Vietnam's dikes
  • Operation Desert Storm (Liberation of Kuwait Jan/Feb 1991)
  • Yugoslav Wars (1991–1999)
    • NATO bombing of Republika Srpska (1995) (Operation Deliberate Force)
    • Kosovo War (1999)
      • NATO bombing of industry and other civilian infrastructure in Serbia. Examples include the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade (claimed to have been done by mistake) and the deliberate bombing of the main TV center in Belgrade.
  • Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) invasion of Iraq.
    • Precision laser and GPS guided bombs were used extensively, not only to damage and destroy Saddam Hussein's army but also to damage infrastructure such as communications, utilities, and various government buildings. The campaign moved into asymmetric warfare once strategic targets no longer existed or were not viable targets.

Read more about this topic:  Strategic Bombing

Famous quotes containing the words strategic, bombing and/or events:

    “Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.”
    —Helen Hayes (1900–1993)

    “Did all of us feel interested in bombing buildings only when the men we slept with were urging us on?”
    —Jane Alpert (b. 1947)

    “Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)