Introduction

Abstract

This introduction describes the strategic bombing mission of the US Army Air Forces’ Eighth Air Force against the Fock-Wulfe plant at Bremen, Germany, on April 17, 1943, assessing the use of high-altitude daylight precision bombing,. The introduction then reviews American strategic bombing theory from its origins in World War I to the thinking of three great interwar air power theorists―the Italian Giulio Douhet, the Briton Hugh Trenchard, and the American Billy Mitchell―to the founding of the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS), the development of the Norden bombsight and B-17 bomber, and the genesis of HADPB theory at the Air Corps Tactical School.