Surviving Bomber Aircraft of World War Two

188 Pages·2012·3.11 MB·English

by  Berliner

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright © Don Berliner 2012
9781783830510

The right of Don Berliner to be identified as Author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Chapter 1 - United States of America
Chapter 2 - Great Britain
Chapter 3 - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Chapter 4 - Germany
Chapter 5 - Italy
Chapter 6 - Japan
Appendix - Extinct World War Two Bomber Types

Introduction
Combat aviation in World War Two was really about bombers.
Fighters were unquestionably the glamour airplanes. The Spitfires
and Messerschmitts and Mustangs were the fastest and the most
maneuverable, and their pilots were the modern counterparts of
daring, flamboyant cavalrymen. But fighters were used primarily to
destroy enemy bombers before they could accomplish their destructive
missions, and to prevent enemy fighters from destroying their own air
force’s bombers.
As the war progressed, fighters became fighter-bombers, taking on
some of the characteristics of bombers, with shackles under their
wings that could carry hundreds and then thousands of pounds of
bombs. In order to make this work, the fighter pilot had to accept the
role of bombardier, in addition to the those of navigator, radioman and
gunner, for which he might not have been so thoroughly trained.
Vital as they were, all other types of aircraft had to take a back seat
to the bombers. Trainers existed to prepare pilots and aircrew for their
primary missions. Transports delivered men and materiel to where
they were needed. Reconnaissance airplanes found the targets for the
bombers and the fighter-bombers, and then brought back enough
information to enable analysts to determine the effectiveness of the
bombing missions.
Most major air forces included the same broad sub-categories of
bombers: attack, light, medium and patrol. But only the Royal Air
Force and US Army Air Forces saw the need for thousands of four-
engined heavy and very heavy bombers. They took the war directly to
the enemy’s homes and factories, and it was the lack of such long-
range deliverers of bombs in the Luftwaffe that constituted one of the
major, history-changing blunders on the part of the leaders of the Third
Reich.
While much of the pre-war thinking about air warfare pointed to
such bombers being unstoppable, the initial inability to provide them
with fighter protection revealed the serious susceptibility of even the
most heavily-gunned bombers to an organized attack by a swarm of
enemy interceptors. It wasn’t until the development of the long-range
single-seat fighter capable of accompanying bombers on their longest
missions, did it become feasible to send great formations deep into
enemy territory in broad daylight.
In the final accounting, it was the bombers’ ability to significantly
interfere with the production of equipment and vital parts, such as ball
bearings, that so reduced the war-making potential of both Germany
and Japan, thus shortening the war and saving many thousands of
lives.
Inevitably, there are a few bombers whose exact categorization has
been impossible to ascertain. Is a ‘reconnaissance bomber’ a
reconnaissance airplane or a bomber? What of a bomber that was
withdrawn from combat during the war and used for training bomber
pilots?
As was the case with fighters in Volume I, the World War Two types
display an amazing range of technology. There was progress in just a
few years from those with open cockpits, fixed landing gears and
piston engines of a few hundred horsepower, to the Arado Ar.234 Blitz
with four jet engines, and the Fieseler Fi 103 ‘buzz bomb’, which
lacked a human pilot.