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The 'aerial bombing of cities' became a common tactic in World War II.

Contents

Italian-Turkish War of 1911-1912

Balkan Wars

World War I

Spanish Civil War

Second Sino-Japanese War

World War II

The Cold War

Aerial bombing since World War II

Aerial bombardment and international law

See also

References

Further reading

Footnotes

Italian-Turkish War of 1911-1912

The very first aerial act of aggression occurred during the Italian-Turkish War of 1911-1912 in North Africa. Italy had been using aircraft to monitor enemy troop movements and search for Turkish artillery positions. One Italian pilot, a Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, realized that the aircraft could be used for more than simple reconnaissance. The event occurred over a Turkish camp at Ain Zara in Libya on 1 November 1911. Lt. Gavotti was flying his Taube monoplane at an altitude of 600 ft (185 m) when he took four small 4.5 lb (2 kg) grenades from a leather pouch, screwed in the detonators he had carried aboard in his pocket, and threw each bomb over the side by hand. Although no one was injured and little damage was done, Lt. Gavotti earned his place in history for conducting the first aerial bombing raid ever recorded.

Balkan Wars

The second ever aerial bombardment was on October 16, 1912 by a Bulgarian military aircraft during the Balkan Wars. The aircraft was German built Albatros F-2. The pilot Radul Milkov and an observer named Prodan Tarakchiev flew on a reconnaissance mission over the Turkish army’s positions in Edirne. During the flight, the pilot and observer dropped bombs placed in specially designed compartments outside the aircraft. The bombs were dropped over a Turkish military base.
More about this Bulgarian bombing can be found in the article First air-dropped bomb.

World War I

The first ever aerial bombardment of civilians was on January 19, 1915, in which two German Zeppelins dropped 24 fifty-kilogram high-explosive bombs and ineffective three-kilogram incendiaries on the English towns of Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn, and the surrounding villages. In all, four people were killed, sixteen injured, and monetary damage was estimated at £7,740, although the public and media reaction were out of proportion to the death toll.^[1]
London was accidentally bombed in May, and, in July 1916, the Kaiser allowed directed raids against urban centres. There were 23 airship raids in 1916 in which 125 tons of ordnance were dropped, killing 293 people and injuring 691. Gradually British air defences improved. In 1917 and 1918 there were only eleven Zeppelin raids against England, and the final raid occurred on August 5 1918, which resulted in the death of KK Peter Strasser, commander of the German Naval Airship Department. By the end of the war, 51 raids had been undertaken, in which 5,806 bombs were dropped, killing 557 people and injuring 1,358. It has been argued that the raids were effective far beyond material damage in diverting and hampering wartime production, and diverting twelve squadrons and over 10,000 men to air defences.
Between the wars, the British used aerial bombing as a counter-insurgency tactic in Iraq and India's north west frontier.

Spanish Civil War

During the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalists under Francisco Franco made extensive use of aerial bombing on civilian targets. Nazi Germany gave aircraft to Franco to support the overthrow of the Spanish Republican government. The first major example of this came in November 1936, when German and Spanish aircraft pounded Republican held Madrid from November 19-23. This bombardment was sustained throughout the Siege of Madrid. Barcelona and Valencia were also targeted in this way. On April 26, 1937, the German ''Luftwaffe'' (Condor Legion) bombed the Spanish city of Guernica carrying out the most high profile aerial attack of the war. This act caused world-wide revulsion and was the subject of a famous painting by Picasso, but by the standards of bombings during World War Two, casualties were fairly minor, estimates ranging from 500 to 1500. However, it remains significant as it was the first-ever saturation bombing of a civilian population.

Second Sino-Japanese War

During the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the Japanese widely used airplanes to indiscriminately bomb key targets and cities, such as Mukden. Immediately following the First Shanghai Incident of 1932, Japanese carrier planes devastated the Bund and provided air support for marines landing on Pudong. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Imperial Japanese Army, in conjunction with the Imperial Japanese Navy, began relentlessly bombing Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and other populated cities on the Chinese coast from the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The Japanese therefore pioneered the fundamentals of indiscriminate terror bombing, as in the aforementioned cities, bombing resulted in appalling figures of both casualties and deaths where in the densely populated districts, a single bomb could result in hundreds of dead and wounded. These earlier mass raids were to be repeated against the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, and against the then Chinese capital of Nanjing immediately preceding the barbarous Nanjing Massacre. Perhaps the most notorious bombing campaign undertaken by the Japanese during the China Incident as it was deemed, was the unrelenting aerial bombing of Chongqing, where entire districts of the city were razed persistently by Japanese incendiary and high explosive missiles.

World War II

At the beginning of World War II, the bombing of cities was a normal practice of the German Luftwaffe. In the first stages of war, the Germans carried out many massive indiscriminate bombings of towns and cities in Poland (1939), with Wieluń being the first city destroyed by 75%. Similar tactics was used during the Rotterdam Blitz in 1940. After the Germany victory in the Battle of France, German turned its attention to Great Britain. In the beginning, predominantly as part of the preparation for the invasion of England in Operation Sealion, a 3-step air campaign was launched. In the first step British air defense installations were attacked (airfields, Sector stations, radar stations and depots). In the second step the attacks concentrated on aircraft factories, main supply harbors, communication centers and railroad installations in southern England. During that time the RAF started relatively small-size counterattacks on cities in the Ruhr Area, on Berlin and Munich. The 3rd-step, the tactical close air support of the invasion, of the proposed German air force operations against England was not carried out, because Hitler dropped the invasion plans. After that, the Luftwaffe carried out an intensive bombing of cities in Britain, including London and Coventry to weaken the morale of the population, in a bombing campaign known in Britain as "the Blitz", from September 1940 through to May 1941 with the goal of forcing Britain to accept peace without the need for an invasion.
In response, the British started intensive night air raids on Berlin and other cities. In 1942 a new area bombing directive was given to the RAF. In this directive the goals of the British attacks were defined. The primary goal was the so called "morale bombing", to weaken the will of the civil population to resist. Following ths directive an intensive bombing of highly populated city centers and working class quarters started. On 30 May 1942, between 00:47 and 02:25 hours, the RAF launched the first "1,000 bomber raid" when 1,046 aircraft bombed Cologne in Operation Millennium. Over 2,000 tons of high explosive and incendaries were dropped on the medieval town, burning it from end to end. The devastation was total. The fires could be seen 600 miles away at an altitude of 20,000 feet. Over 3,000 houses were destroyed and 10,000 damaged. Twelve thousand separate fires raged, destroying 36 factories, damaging 270 more and leaving 45,000 people without homes and workplaces. Only 384 civilians and 85 soldiers were killed, but thousands left the city. Bomber Command lost 40 aircraft.

Two further 1,000 bomber raids were executed over Essen and Bremen, but neither so utterly shook both sides as the scale of the destruction at Cologne. The effects of the massive raids using a combination of Blockbuster bombs and incendiaries created firestorms in some cites. The most extreme examples were caused by the bombing of Hamburg in Operation Gomorrah (45,000 dead), and the bombings of Kassel (10,000 dead), Darmstadt (12,500 dead), Pforzheim (21,200 dead), Swinemuende (23,000 dead), and Dresden (estimated 25,000 to 35,000 dead).
In the Pacific theatre, the U.S. bombing of Tokyo created firestorms which killed 73,000, while many other Japanese cities were bombed (eg. Kobe, 8,800 dead). In addition, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed over 200,000 people.

The Cold War

During the Cold War, the threat of destruction of cities by nuclear weapons carried on bombers or ICBMs became the main instrument of the balance of terror that allegedly kept the United States and Soviet Union from open warfare with one another. See mutual assured destruction.

Aerial bombing since World War II

During the Vietnam War the United States from 1965 to 1968 conducted an aerial campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder. The campaign began with interdiction of supply lines in rural areas of southern North Vietnam but incrementally spread northward throughout the country. On June 29, 1966 restrictions against bombing the capital city of Hanoi and the country's largest port, Haiphong were lifted, and they were bombed by the United States Air Force and Navy [1]. The bombing of their city centres continued to be prohibited by "circles of restriction around Hanoi and Haiphong"[2].
The United States has bombed city areas during a number of military operations, including Tripoli (1986), Belgrade (Kosovo War 1999) and Baghdad (1991 and 2003). These attacks were made using precision-guided munitions (or "smart bombs") and cruise missiles. Following the September 11, 2001 attack the United States attacked the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, bombing urban areas, military bases and mountainous regions, with some estimates of deaths amounting to 5000.
During the US-led invasion of Iraq and the US-led occupation of Iraq, targets in many Iraqi urban areas were bombed by the U.S. and the Royal Air Force. During the invasion the US and Britain's stated objectives were Iraqi military and government targets and the Iraqi head-of-state, Saddam Hussein. During the post-invasion conflict their stated objective was to target terrorists / the Iraqi insurgency entrenched in cities as a part of urban warfare. Some sources claim that over 10,000 civilians have been killed as a result of this bombing.^[2]
In all of these instances the United States government maintained that it has a policy of striking only militarily-significant targets while doing all possible to avoid what it terms "collateral damage" to non-military areas and persons.
::''See strategic bombing for a more thorough treatment of this subject.''

Aerial bombardment and international law

'International law up to 1945'
International law relating to aerial bombardment before and during World War II rests on the treaties of 1864, 1899, 1907 which constituted the definition of most of the laws of at that time — which, despite repeated diplomatic attempts, was not updated in the immediate run up to World War II. The most relevant of these treaties are the Hague Conventions of 1907 because they were the last treaties ratified before 1939 which specify the laws of war on aerial bombardment. Of these treaties there are two which have a direct bearing on this issue of bombardment. These are "Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18 1907"^[3] and "Laws of War:
Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War (Hague IX); October 18 1907"^[4]. It is significant that there is a different treaty which should be invoked for bombardment of land by land (Hague IV) and of land by sea (Hague IX)
^[5]. Hague IV which reaffirmed and updated Hague II (1899)
^[6] contains the following clauses:
In 1923 a draft convention, promoted by the United States was proposed: ''The Hague Rules of Air Warfare'', December, 1922-February, 1923",^[7] There are number of articles which would have directly affected how nations used aerial bombardment and defended against it; these are articles 18, 22 and 24. It was, however, never adopted in legally binding form.
^[8]
The subordination of the law of air warfare to the law of ground warfare was arguably established by the Greco-German arbitration tribunal of 1927-30. It found that the 1907 Hague Convention on ''"The Laws and Customs of War on Land"'' applied to the German attacks in Greece during World War I:^[9] This concerned both Article 25 and Article 26.
The U.S. Air Force Law Review argues that "if international law is not enforced, persistent violations can conceivably be adopted as customary practice, permitting conduct that was once prohibited"^[10] Even if the Greco-German arbitration tribunal findings had established the rules for aerial bombardment, by 1945, the belligerents of World War II had ignored the preliminary bombardment procedures that the Greco-German arbitration tribunal had recognized.^[11]
In response to a League of Nations declaration against bombardment from the air^[12], a draft convention in Amsterdam of 1938^[13] would have provided specific definitions of what constituted a "undefended" town, excessive civilian casualties and appropriate warning. This draft convention makes the standard of being undefended quite high - any military units or anti-aircraft within the radius qualifies a town as defended. This convention, like the 1923 draft, was not ratified, nor even close to being ratified, when hostilities broke out in Europe. While the two conventions offer a guideline to what the belligerent powers were considering before the war, neither of these documents came to be legally binding.
After the war the judgement of the Nuremberg Trials,^[14] the records the decision that by 1939 these rules laid down in the 1907 Hague Convention were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as declaratory of the laws and customs of war. Under this post-war decision, a country did not have to have ratified the 1907 Hague conventions in order to be bound by them
^[15].
In 1963 the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the subject of a Japanese judicial review in ''Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State''. The review draws several distinctions which are pertinent to both conventional and atomic aerial bombardment. Based on international law found in Hague Convention of 1907 ''IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land'' and ''IX - Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War'', and the ''Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923'' the Court drew a distinction between "Targeted Aerial Bombardment" and indiscriminate area bombardment, that the court called "Blind Aerial Bombardment", and also a distinction between a defended and undefended city.^[16] "In principle, a defended city is a city which resists an attempt at occupation by land forces. A city even with defence installations and armed forces cannot be said to be a defended city if it is far away from the battlefield and is not in immediate danger of occupation by the enemy."^[17] The court ruled that blind aerial bombardment is only permitted in the immediate vicinity of the operations of land forces and that only targeted aerial bombardment of military installations is permitted further from the front. It also ruled that, in such an event, the incidental death of civilians and the destruction of civilian property during targeted aerial bombardment was not unlawful.^[18] The court acknowledged that the concept of a military objective was enlarged under conditions of total war, but stated that the distinction between the two did not disappear.^[19] The court also ruled that when military targets were concentrated in a comparatively small area, and where defence installations against air raids were very strong, that when the destruction of non-military objectives is small in proportion to the large military interests, or necessity, such destruction is lawful.^[20] So in the judgement of the Court, because of the immense power of the bombs, and the distance from enemy (Allied) land forces, the bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki "was an illegal act of hostilities under international law as it existed at that time, as an indiscriminate bombardment of undefended cities".^[21]
Not all governments and scholars of international law agree with the analysis and conclusions of the Shimoda review, because it was not based on positive international humanitarian law. Colonel Javier Guisández Gómez, at the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, points out:
This leaves the legal status of aerial bombardment during World War II ambiguous and open to other interpretations, for example one of the reasons given by John Bolton, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, for the USA not agreeing to be bound by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is that
'International law since 1945'
In the post war environment, a series of treaties governing the laws of war were adopted starting in 1949. These Geneva Conventions would come into force, in no small part, because of a general reaction against the practices of the Second World War. In 1977 Protocol I was adopted as an amendment to the Geneva conventions.
The International Court of Justice gave an advisory opinion in July 1996 on the ''Legality of the Threat Or Use Of Nuclear Weapons''.^[22]

See also

★ Command responsibility

★ Terror bombing

★ Strategic bombing survey

★ Air supremacy

★ Siege of Warsaw (1939)

References

★ Francisco Javier Guisández Gómez, a colonel in the Spanish Air Force ICRC: "The Law of Air Warfare" International Review of the Red Cross no 323, p.347-363

★ Joan T. Phillips. ''List of documents and web links relating to the law of armed conflict in air and space operations'', May 2006. Bibliographer, Muir S. Poochild Research Information Center Maxwell (United States) Air Force Base, Alabama.

★ Jefferson D. Reynolds. ''"Collateral Damage on the 21st century battlefield: Enemy exploitation of the law of armed conflict, and the struggle for a moral high ground".'' Air Force Law Review ''Volume 56, 2005''(PDF) pp. 4-108

★ Charles Rousseau, Le droit des conflits armés, Editions Pedone, Paris, 1983

Further reading

★ Among the Dead Cities, , A. C., Grayling, Walker Publishing Company Inc., 2006, ISBN 0-8027-1471-4

Footnotes

1.
Ward's Book of Days. Pages of interesting anniversaries. What happened on this day in history. January 19th. On this day in history in 1915, German zeppelins bombed Britain.
2. The terrible human cost of Bush and Blair's military adventure: "10,000 civilian deaths UK and US authorities discourage counting of deaths as a result of the conflict", reports David Randall The Independent on Sunday, 8 February 2004
3. Laws of War : Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18 1907 available from the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, entered into force: 26 January 1910.
4. Laws of War: Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War (Hague IX); October 18 1907, available from the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School,
5. International Review of the Red Cross no 323 cites: Charles Rousseau, References p. 360. "the a nalogy between land and aerial bombardment".
6. Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague II); July 29 1899, available from the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, entry into force 4 September 1900
7. The Hague Rules of Air Warfare, 1922-12 to 1923-02, ''this convention was never adopted'.
8. Rules concerning the Control of Wireless Telegraphy in Time of War and Air Warfare, from the International Committee of the Red Cross's section on international humanitarian law verified 26 February 2005
9. Laws of War : Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18 1907 available from the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, entered into force: 26 January 1910
10. Jefferson D. Reynolds. ''"Collateral Damage on the 21st century battlefield: Enemy exploitation of the law of armed conflict, and the struggle for a moral high ground".'' Air Force Law Review ''Volume 56, 2005''(PDF) Page 57/58
11. Javier Guisández Gómez ''The Law of Air Warfare'' 30 June 1998 International Review of the Red Cross no 323, p.347-363
12. Protection of Civilian Populations Against Bombing From the Air in Case of War, Unanimous resolution of the League of Nations Assembly, 30 September 1938, verified 26 February 2005
13. Draft Convention for the Protection of Civilian Populations Against New Engines of War. Amsterdam, 1938, verified 26 February 2005
14. "Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 1 Charter of the International Military Tribunal", proceedings of the Nuremberg Trials, available from the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, verified 26 February 2005.
15. Judgement : The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, available from the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, verified 26 February 2005.
16. : Paragraph 6
17. : Paragraph 7
18. : Paragraph 10
19. : Paragraph 9
20. paragraph 10
21. : Paragraph 8
22. ICJ: Legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons