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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 the same way that a carpet covers a floor. Carpet bombing is usually achieved by dropping many .
Carpet bombing of cities, towns, villages, or other areas containing a concentration of protected civilians has been considered a war crime since 1977, through Article 51 of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.
The term obliteration bombing is sometimes used to describe especially intensified bombing with the intention of destroying a city or a large part of the city. The term area bombing refers to indiscriminate bombing of an area and also encompasses cases of carpet bombing, including obliteration bombing. It was used in that sense especially during World War II and the Korean War.
In March 1938, the Bombing of Barcelona saw Axis powers airstrikes killing up to 1,300 people and wounding 2,000. It is considered the first carpet bombing of a city, and set a precedent for several such bombings in World War II.
The Japanese bombing of China's wartime capital Chongqing from 18 February 1938 to 23 August 1943 caused 23,600 deaths and over 30,000 wounded.
There were two results from this. Firstly, civil defence programs were set up, with gas masks being issued, plans for air raid shelters were set up and organisations to manage civilians before a raid and deal with damage and casualties after one were put in place. Secondly, agreements were sought to make the targeting of civilians illegal under international law. At the time that Douhet and others were publishing their ideas, no air force had planned their capabilities with the intent of making a "knockout blow" against civilian targets. The Hague Rules of Air Warfare were developed in 1922/23 to prevent deliberately attacking civilians, yet it was not ratified by any country. At the start of World War II, the Royal Air Force had an initial instruction to abide by the Hague Rules for as long as the enemy did. This restraint was followed by both Britain and Germany until 11 May 1940, when, with Winston Churchill now in the role of Prime Minister and the war in France going badly, the RAF attacked industrial and transport infrastructure targets in Mönchengladbach. This raid caused civilian casualties.
As the war progressed, the Battle of Britain developed from a fight for air supremacy into the strategic and aerial bombing of London, Liverpool, Coventry and other British cities.
As heavy bombers were brought into service and technology and tactics were improved, the selection of targets was changed. The intention of avoiding civilian casualties as collateral damage disappeared. Instead, the civilian population which worked in war-related industriesand their housingbecame the target.
Some of this change came from a wish to retaliate for the German attack on Coventry. It was also based on what was learnt from being the target in the Blitz. It had been found that factory buildings were more resistant to critical damage than the homes of their workers. Absenteeism of the workforce rose significantly if their housing was uninhabitable, so affecting industrial production. Whilst morale was still discussed, the meaning of the word changed from its pre-war usage. Now a reduction in morale was intended to reduce industrial production that supported the war effort. The area bombing directive was issued to RAF Bomber Command in 1942
The Eighth Air Force of the USAAF arrived in Britain over the summer of 1942. Despite Roosevelt's pleas to Hitler to avoid bombing civilians prior to the US joining the war, he was a supporter of bombing Germany. Both Churchill and Roosevelt were in the position that Joseph Stalin was pressing for the Western Allies to open a new front in Europesomething which they were not ready to do. Therefore a bombing campaign - the Combined Bomber Offensive - following the Casablanca directive to the Allied air forces was all they could offer to support the Soviet Union.
Operation Gomorrah, carried out by Bomber Command against Hamburg, targeted a city with both high susceptibility to fire and a large number of factories making products for the German war effort. The raid caused substantial damage to the city, especially the housing of industrial workers. A carefully developed mix of high explosive bombs and incendiaries was used. High explosives broke windows and made fire-fighting dangerous, whilst the incendiaries set the buildings on fire. This methodology was used for further attacks on urban areas (though not with such major effect) throughout the war, with Dresden being one of the final targets.
Carpet bombing was also used as close air support (as "flying artillery") for ground operations. The massive bombing was concentrated in a narrow and shallow area of the front (a few kilometers by a few hundred meters deep), closely coordinated with the advance of friendly troops. The first successful use of the technique was on 6 May 1943, at the end of the Tunisia Campaign. Carried out under Sir Arthur Tedder, it was hailed by the press as Tedder's bomb-carpet (or Tedder's carpet). The bombing was concentrated in a four by three-mile area, preparing the way for the First Army. This tactic was later used in many cases in the Normandy Campaign; for example, in the Battle for Caen.
During the final months of the war in the Philippines, the United States military used carpet bombing against the Japanese forces in Manila and Baguio, reducing much of the cities to rubble. Manila became the second-most-destroyed city of World War II.
Between June and October 1950, USAF Far East Air Force (FEAF) B-29 bombers carried out massive aerial attacks on transport centers and industrial hubs in North Korea. Having soon established air supremacy by the destruction of the Korean People's Army Air and Anti-Air Force in the air and on the ground, FEAF bombers encountered no resistance and "the sky over North Korea was their safe front yard." On 3 November, Douglas MacArthur agreed for the first time to a firebombing campaign, agreeing to General George E. Stratemeyer's request to burn Kanggye and several other towns. That evening, MacArthur's chief of staff told Stratemeyer that the firebombing of Sinuiju had also been approved. Stratemeyer sent orders to the Fifth Air Force and Bomber Command to
"destroy every means of communications and every installation, factory, city, and village".On 5 November, 22 B-29s attacked Kanggye, destroying 75% of the city. After the failure of the Chinese Fifth Phase Offensive and the UN May–June 1951 counteroffensive, from July 1951, while the ground war became static when the UN and the PVA/KPA fought but exchanged little territory, large-scale bombing of North Korea continued., which had been 85% destroyed, on Armistice-eve, 26 July 1953]]
North Korea suffered heavy damage from U.S. bombing. Major General William F. Dean, the highest-ranking U.S. POW from the war, reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland.William F Dean (1954) General Dean's Story, (as told to William L Worden), Viking Press, pp. 272–73. North Korean factories, schools, hospitals, and government offices were forced to move underground, and air defenses were "non-existent". North Korea ranks as among the most heavily bombed countries in history, and the U.S. dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs (including 32,557 tons of napalm) on Korea, more than during the entire Pacific War. By the end of the war, eighteen of the twenty-two major cities in North Korea had been at least half obliterated according to damage assessments by the U.S. Air Force.
Beginning in late 1965, a number of B-52Ds underwent Big Belly modifications to increase bomb capacity for carpet bombings. While the external payload remained at twenty-four 500-pound (227 kg) or 750-pound (340 kg) bombs, the internal capacity increased from twenty-seven to eighty-four 500-pound bombs or from twenty-seven to forty-two 750-pound bombs. The modification created enough capacity for a total of 60,000 pounds (27,215 kg) in one hundred and eight bombs. Thus modified, B-52Ds could carry 22,000 pounds (9,980 kg) more than B-52Fs. Designed to replace B-52Fs, modified B-52Ds entered combat in April 1966 flying from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. Each bombing mission lasted 10 to 12 hours with an aerial refueling by KC-135 Stratotankers. In spring 1967, the aircraft began flying from U Tapao Airfield in Thailand giving the aircraft the advantage of not requiring in-flight refueling.
The zenith of B-52 attacks in Vietnam was Operation Linebacker II (sometimes referred to as the Christmas Bombing) which consisted of waves of B-52s (mostly D models, but some Gs without jamming equipment and with a smaller bomb load). Over 12 days, B-52s flew 729 and dropped 15,237 tons of bombs on Hanoi, Haiphong, and other targets. Originally 42 B-52s were committed to the war; however, numbers were frequently twice this figure.
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