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
unguided bombs.
Carpet bombing of cities, towns, villages, or other areas containing a concentration of civilians is considered a
war crime as of Article 51 of the 1977
Protocol I
Protocol I (sometimes referred to as Additional Protocol I or AP 1) is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of victims of ''international conflicts'', extending to "armed conflicts in which peoples are ...
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.
Early history
One of the first attempts at carpet bombing was at the
Battle of El Mazuco during the
Spanish Civil War in 1937, against widely-dispersed infantry on rocky slopes, and the attacking
Condor Legion learned that carpet bombing was not very effective in such terrain.
In March 1938, the
Bombing of Barcelona saw
Italian and German airstrikes killing up to 1,300 people and wounding 2,000. It is considered the first carpet bombing of a city,
and set precedent for several such bombings in World War II.
During World War II
In the
European Theatre, the first city to suffer heavily from aerial bombardment was
Warsaw, on 25 September 1939. Continuing this trend in warfare, the
Rotterdam Blitz was an
aerial bombardment of
Rotterdam by 90 bombers of the
German Air Force
The German Air Force (german: Luftwaffe, lit=air weapon or air arm, ) is the aerial warfare branch of the , the armed forces of Germany. The German Air Force (as part of the ''Bundeswehr'') was founded in 1956 during the era of the Cold War a ...
on 14 May 1940, during the
German invasion of the Netherlands. The objective was to support the German assault on the city, break Dutch resistance, and force the Dutch to surrender. Despite a ceasefire, the bombing destroyed almost the entire historic city centre, killing nearly nine hundred civilians and leaving 30,000 people homeless. The destructive success of the bombing led the ''
Oberkommando der Luftwaffe'' (OKL) to threaten to destroy the city of
Utrecht if the Dutch Government did not surrender. The Dutch capitulated early the next morning.
As the war progressed, the
Battle of Britain developed from a fight for air supremacy into the strategic and aerial bombing of London, Coventry and other British cities. In retaliation for this, the British built up the
RAF Bomber Command
RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II. From 1942 onward, the British bo ...
, which was capable of delivering many thousands of tons of bombs onto a single target, in spite of heavy initial bomber casualties in 1940. The bomber force was then wielded by
Arthur Travers Harris in an effort to break German morale and obtain the surrender which
Douhet had predicted 15 years earlier. The United States joined the war and the
USAAF greatly reinforced the campaign, bringing the
Eighth Air Force
The Eighth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) is a numbered air force (NAF) of the United States Air Force's Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). It is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The command serves as Air Force ...
into the European Theatre. Many cities, both large and small, were virtually destroyed by Allied bombing.
Cologne,
Berlin,
Hamburg and
Dresden are among the most infamous, the latter two developing
firestorms.
W. G. Sebald
Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by literary critics as one of the g ...
's book, ''
On the Natural History of Destruction
''On the Natural History of Destruction'' is a 1999 book by the German writer W. G. Sebald. Its original German title is ''Luftkrieg und Literatur'', which means "Air war and literature". It consists of essays about literature and writers, through ...
'', comments on the carpet bombing of German cities and asks why it does not play a larger part in the German national consciousness, and why virtually no German authors have written about the events. Despite the lack of literary coverage, a style of film, the
rubble film, shot among the urban debris and depicting the gritty lives of those who had to rebuild the destroyed cities, developed in the years after the end of World War II.
Carpet bombing was also used as
close air support
In military tactics, close air support (CAS) is defined as air action such as air strikes by fixed or rotary-winged aircraft against hostile targets near friendly forces and require detailed integration of each air mission with fire and moveme ...
(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
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder, (11 July 1890 – 3 June 1967) was a senior Royal Air Force commander. He was a pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and he went ...
, 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.
In the
Pacific War
The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast ...
, carpet bombing was used extensively against Japanese cities such as Tokyo.
On the night of 9–10 March 1945, 334
B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers were directed to
attack the most heavily populated civilian sectors of Tokyo.
In just one night, over 100,000 people burned to death from a heavy bombardment of incendiary bombs,
comparable to the wartime number of U.S. casualties in the entire Pacific theater.
Another 100,000 to one million Japanese were left homeless. These attacks were followed by similar ones against
Kobe
Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...
,
Osaka, and
Nagoya, as well as other sectors of Tokyo, where over 9,373 tons
of incendiary bombs were dropped on civilian and military targets. By the time of the dropping of the
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, light and medium bombers were being directed to bomb targets of convenience, as most urban areas had already been destroyed. In the 9-month long bombing campaign, over 300,000 Japanese civilians died and 400,000 were wounded.
Vietnam War
During the
Vietnam War, with the escalating situation in Southeast Asia, twenty-eight
B-52Fs were fitted with external racks for twenty-four 750-pound (340 kg) bombs under project ''South Bay'' in June 1964; an additional forty-six aircraft received similar modifications under project ''Sun Bath''.
[Lake ''International Air Power Review'' Summer 2003, p. 103.] In March 1965, the United States commenced
Operation Rolling Thunder. The first combat mission,
Operation Arc Light, was flown by B-52Fs on 18 June 1965, when 30 bombers of the 9th and 441st Bombardment Squadrons struck a communist stronghold near the
Bến Cát District in South Vietnam. The first wave of bombers arrived too early at a designated rendezvous point, and while maneuvering to maintain station, two B-52s collided, which resulted in the loss of both bombers and eight crewmen. The remaining bombers, minus one more that turned back for mechanical problems, continued toward the target. Twenty-seven Stratofortresses dropped on a one-mile by two-mile target box from between , a little more than 50% of the bombs falling within the target zone. The force returned to
Andersen AFB
Andersen Air Force Base (Andersen AFB, AAFB) is a United States Air Force base located primarily within the village of Yigo in the United States territory of Guam. The host unit at Andersen AFB is the 36th Wing (36 WG), assigned to the Pacific ...
except for one bomber with electrical problems that recovered to
Clark AFB, the mission having lasted 13 hours. Post-strike assessment by teams of South Vietnamese troops with American advisors found evidence that the VC had departed the area before the raid, and it was suspected that infiltration of the south's forces may have tipped off the north because of the
ARVN troops involved in the post-strike inspection.

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.
[Dick and Patterson 2006, p. 161.] 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
Andersen Air Force Base (Andersen AFB, AAFB) is a United States Air Force base located primarily within the village of Yigo in the United States territory of Guam. The host unit at Andersen AFB is the 36th Wing (36 WG), assigned to the Pacific ...
,
Guam. Each bombing mission lasted 10 to 12 hours with an
aerial refueling
Aerial refueling, also referred to as air refueling, in-flight refueling (IFR), air-to-air refueling (AAR), and tanking, is the process of transferring aviation fuel from one aircraft (the tanker) to another (the receiver) while both aircraft a ...
by
KC-135 Stratotankers.
[Donald 1997, pp. 161–162.] In spring 1967, the aircraft began flying from
U Tapao Airfield
U-Tapao–Rayong–Pattaya International Airport ( th, ท่าอากาศยานอู่ตะเภา ระยอง–พัทยา; ) also spelled ''Utapao'' and ''U-Taphao'', is a joint civil–military public airport serving ...
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 ]sortie
A sortie (from the French word meaning ''exit'' or from Latin root ''surgere'' meaning to "rise up") is a deployment or dispatch of one military unit, be it an aircraft, ship, or troops, from a strongpoint. The term originated in siege warfare. ...
s and dropped 15,237 tons of bombs on Hanoi, Haiphong, and other targets.[Condor, 1994, p. 38.] Originally 42 B-52s were committed to the war; however, numbers were frequently twice this figure.[Lake 2004, p. 32.]
See also
* Aerial bombardment and international law
* Aerial bombing of cities
* Area bombardment
*Bombing of Warsaw in World War II
The bombing of Warsaw in World War II started with the aerial bombing campaign of Warsaw by the German Luftwaffe during the siege of Warsaw in the invasion of Poland in 1939. It also included German bombing raids during the Warsaw Uprising in 19 ...
* Churchill's advocacy of chemical strike against German cities
* Civilian casualties of strategic bombing
* Giulio Douhet, an early theorist of bombing
* Roerich Pact
* Strategic bombing
* Tactical bombing
* Terror bombing
References
;Notes
Bibliography
*
External links
"Bombs Over Cambodia"
from ''The Walrus''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carpet Bombing
Aerial bombing