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  • Enabling Technologies

    Advanced USAAF technology made the daylight strategic bombing campaign possible.  Key technologies included four-engine bombers, turbosuperchargers, and the Norden bombsight.  Four-Engine Bombers: B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator Four-engine B-17s and B-24s provided the range, payload,

  • Bomber Crew Protection

    A 1942 study determined that relatively low velocity projectiles such as deflected flak fragments or shattered pieces of aircraft structure caused 70% of bomber crew wounds.  Body armor and helmets helped protect against this threat and saved thousands of bomber crewmen from injury or death.  Col

  • Gunners

    US Army Air Forces gunners defended B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator bombers against fighter attacks with machine guns aimed by hand (“flexible guns”) and electrically-powered gun turrets.  Typically, gunners made up half of a bomber crew, manning a top turret, ball turret, two waist guns,

  • Epilogue: Sacrifice and Victory

    Starting with only a theory and a handful of aircraft, the USAAF faced early setbacks and devastating losses.  Still, heavy bomber crews time and time again resolutely fought through enemy defenses to hit their targets.  With their courage and sacrifice, the USAAF created a massive, unstoppable

  • Crippling the Nazi War Machine: USAAF Strategic Bombing in Europe

      At great sacrifice, the US Army Air Forces’ (USAAF) daylight strategic bombing campaign played a critical role in winning the war in Europe.        What is Strategic Bombing?          Strategic bombing is a strategy to destroy a country’s ability or will to fight by attacking its homeland from the

  • Fifteenth Air Force—Strategic Bombing from Italy

    In September 1943, the USAAF formed the Fifteenth Air Force, uniting its Mediterranean heavy bomber forces together at bases in southern Italy.  The USAAF could now mount major strategic raids in southern and eastern Europe, creating even more pressure on the Luftwaffe defense.  String of bombs on

  • Target Berlin

    Berlin, Germany’s capital, was selected as a prime target for the USAAF, not only for its industrial importance, but because the Luftwaffe would be forced to defend it, suffering heavy losses in the process.   The USAAF conducted its first major raid against Berlin on March 6, 1944—672 heavy bombers

  • OPERATION FRANTIC: Shuttle Raids to the Soviet Union

    In 1944, the US persuaded Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to allow USAAF aircraft to operate out of bases in the western Soviet Union.  Between June and September 1944, the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces conducted a total of seven so-called “shuttle raids” under the code name Operation

  • D-Day Support

    “I, personally, am convinced that without your air force...the invasion would not have succeeded...”            —Generalleutnant Adolf Galland, Luftwaffe General of FightersBy May 1944, the strategic bombing campaign had crippled the Luftwaffe’s fighter force, making the Normandy invasion possible. 

  • Memphis Belle Crew

    The young men assigned to the Memphis Belle represented a typical Eighth Air Force heavy bomber crew.  They ranged in age from 19 to 26 and came from states across the US, including Washington, Indiana, Texas, and Connecticut.  Like their Eighth Air Force counterparts—and contrary to a popular