Shuttle bombing is a tactic where bombers fly from their home base to bomb a first target and continue to a different location where they are refuelled and rearmed. The aircraft may then bomb a second target on the return leg to their home base.[1][2][3] Some examples of operations which have used this tactic are:
- In June 1943 the Royal Air Force (RAF) flew their first shuttle bombing mission of World War II it was code named Operation Bellicose. On night of 20/21 June they from their bases in the United Kingdom and bombed Friedrichshafen, landing in Algeria where they refuelled and rearmed. On the return leg they bombed the Italian naval base at La Spezia.[4][5]
- Operation Frantic was a series of air raids conducted by United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) bombers based in Britain or the Mediterranean which then landed at bases built by the Americans in the Ukraine in the Soviet Union.[6]
- During the Warsaw Uprising the Frantic airbases were used for an airdrop to the Poles fighting in the city. On 17 September 1944 70 B-17s and 57 P-51s flew without bombs from Italy and landed safely in the United Kingdom. On 18 September 107 of 110 B-17s dropped 1,248 containers of supplies to Polish forces in Warsaw and flew on to the USSR losing one B-17 with seven more damaged. The next day 100 B-17s and 61 P-51s left the USSR and bombed the marshalling yard at Szolnok in Hungary as they returned to bases in Italy.[7]
Operation Paravane was based on a similar concept. In September 1944 No. 9 Squadron RAF and No. 617 Squadron RAF flew from their home bases in Scotland to a temporary base at Yagodnik, near Archangel in the Soviet Union. From there they bombed the German battleship Tirpitz in the Norwegian Kaa Fjord and continued on back to Scotland.
References
- ^ Staff. Shuttle bombing McGraw-Hill's AccessScience Encyclopedia of Science & Technology Online
- ^ Edward T. Russell (1999). Leaping the Atlantic Wall: Army Air Forces Campaigns in Western Europe, 1942–1945(PDF), United States Air Force History and Museums Program pp. 26,27. (HTML copy on the website of USAAF.net)
- ^ Dear, I.C.B and Foot, M.R.D. (editors) (2005). "Shuttle bombing". The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. p.778. ISBN 9780192806703.
- ^ Christopher Chant (1986). The Encyclopedia of Codenames of World War II, Routledge, ISBN 0710207182. p. 15
- ^ Jon Lake (2002). Lancaster Squadrons 1942-43, Osprey Publishing, ISBN 1841763136. p. 66
- ^ Charles T. O'Reilly (2001). Forgotten Battles: Italy's War of Liberation, 1943-1945 Lexington Books, ISBN 0739101951. p. 343
- ^ Combat Chronology of the US Army Air Forces September 1944: 17,18,19 copied from USAF History Publications & wwii combat chronology (pdf)
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