One Hundred Years of Flight USAF Chronology ... - The Air University

1943
June 10: The Royal Air Force and the Army Air Forces launched the Combined
Bomber Offensive against Germany. Eighth Air Force struck
enemy industrial targets by day, while the Royal Air Force attacked
enemy cities by night. The around-the-clock bombing was designed to
cripple and then destroy the Germans’ ability and will to continue the
war.
June 11: After a month-long aerial bombardment that had commenced on
May 8, some 11,000 Italian troops on the island of Pantelleria, between
Italy and Tunisia, surrendered to the Allies without firing a shot.
June 13: In a raid on Kiel, Germany, Eighth Air Force lost 26 of 60 bombers,
demonstrating the need for fighter escorts.
June 15: The world’s first operational jet bomber, the Arado Ar–234V–1
Blitz, first flew in Germany.
June 22: For the first time, Eighth Air Force bombed a target in the Ruhr
industrial area of Germany. The chemical works and synthetic rubber
plant at Huls was so severely damaged that it did not resume full production
for six months.
July 2: Lt. Charles Hall of the 99th Fighter Squadron shot down a German
FW–190 over Sicily, becoming the first black Army Air Forces pilot to
shoot down an enemy airplane.
July 24–August 3: In Operation GOMORRAH, the Royal Air Force
attempted to destroy the German city of Hamburg with four air raids
at night. Eighth Air Force supported the operation with two daylight
raids. The attacks produced firestorms that killed some 40,000 people.
During these raids, the British first used “window”—strips of aluminum
foil dropped from the bombers to confuse German radar.
August 1: Five Army Air Forces B–24 groups flying from Libya in North
Africa conducted a low-level bombing raid on Ploesti, Rumania, to
destroy Germany’s most important oil refineries. The attack, codenamed
Operation TIDALWAVE, reduced Ploesti’s refining capacity by
40 percent. Fifty-four of 177 bombers were lost. Four of the flyers on
the raid earned the Medal of Honor.
August 5: Jacqueline Cochran assumed duties as director of Women Airforce
Service Pilots (WASP), a new organization that merged her
Women’s Flying Training Detachment with the Women’s Auxiliary
Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). Nancy Harkness Love, former WAFS commander,
became WASP executive with the Ferrying Division of Air
Transport Command.
August 17: More than 300 B–17s took off from the United Kingdom without
fighter protection to bomb ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt and
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