Emergency Fighter Program
The Emergency Fighter Program was the program that resulted from a decision taken on July 3, 1944 by the Luftwaffe regarding the German aircraft manufacturing companies during the last year of the Third Reich.
American soldier guarding a captured Heinkel He 162 Spatz.
Model of pulsejet-powered He P.1077 Romeo. Pulsejets vibrated excessively and needed help to start.
The Do 335 was the only piston-engined fighter allowed to go forward under the Jägernotprogramm.
The rocket-powered Focke-Wulf Volksjäger 2.
Strategic bombing during World War II
World War II (1939–1945) involved sustained strategic bombing of railways, harbours, cities, workers' and civilian housing, and industrial districts in enemy territory. Strategic bombing as a military strategy is distinct both from close air support of ground forces and from tactical air power. During World War II, many military strategists of air power believed that air forces could win major victories by attacking industrial and political infrastructure, rather than purely military targets. Strategic bombing often involved bombing areas inhabited by civilians, and some campaigns were deliberately designed to target civilian populations in order to terrorize them and disrupt their usual activities. International law at the outset of World War II did not specifically forbid the aerial bombardment of cities – despite the prior occurrence of such bombing during World War I (1914–1918), the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).
A B-24 on a bomb run over the Astra Romana refinery in Ploiești, Romania, during Operation Tidal Wave
Bombing of Wieluń, the first Polish city destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing, on 1 September 1939. In one of the first acts of World War II, German bombers destroyed 70%[citation needed] of all the buildings, including a clearly marked hospital and church, killing approximately 127[citation needed] civilians.
Polish mothers with their newborn infants in a makeshift maternity ward inside a hospital basement during the Bombing of Warsaw by the German Luftwaffe
Warsaw burning after a German bombing of the city. The Luftwaffe air campaign resulted in the deaths of an estimated 20,000 – 25,000 civilians.