The Great War - WW1
The Birth of the Bomber
By May 1917 the German Army had become disillusioned with airships and had developed a Bomber capable of raiding targets in Britain- the Gotha GIV. An attack on the port of Folkestone on the 25th of May 1917 was followed by two dramatic daylight raids on London on the 13th of June and the 7th of July.
The raids caused a huge uproar regarding the state of Britain's air defences, the rapid improvement of which soon forced the Gothas to bomb by night. Meanwhile the British set about forming their own strategic bombing force, which emerged in the spring of 1918 as the fledgling RAF's Independent Force, based in France and given the task of attacking German war industry.
The Independent Forces main weapon was the Handley Page 0/400, which had a maximum bomb-load of 2'000lbs. Bad weather and demands for their use in a tactical role in the final Allied offences of the war meant that the 0/400s flew only a fraction of their missions against German war factories. They could carry 30 250-pound bombs on short-range missions or a 1000-pound payload to Berlin. As the war drew to a close, frantic efforts were made to bring the massive Handley Page V/500 into service to launch 'terror raids' on the German capital Berlin, but the huge biplane never flew in anger. The total amount of V/500s produced was 35, they had a 126ft wingspan and were powered by four 375hp Rolls Royce engines mounted in tandem pairs midway between the wings.
Bombing did little or nothing to to change the course of the war, but in four years it had nevertheless achieved a degree of sophistication undreamt of in 1914, when pilots had gaily lobbed grenades from the cockpits of their aircraft on to enemy formations below.