Question: Why was the Do 17 less frequently used than other planes for night bomb in the Battle of Britain?
About the article "Battle of Britain", section "Bombers".

Candidate passages:
The "Luftwaffe"'s four primary bombers were the Heinkel He 111, Dornier Do 17, and Junkers Ju 88 for level bombing, and the Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" for diving attacks.
The Heinkel He 111 was used in greater numbers than the others during the conflict and is better known, partly due to its distinctive wing shape.
Each level bomber also had a few reconnaissance versions that were used during the battle.
Although successful in previous "Luftwaffe" engagements, the "Stuka" suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Britain, particularly on 18 August, due to its slow speed and vulnerability to fighter interception after the dive bombing.
As a result of the losses and limited payload and range, "Stuka" units were largely removed from operations over England and concentrated on shipping instead until they were re-deployed to the Eastern Front in 1941.
They returned on occasion, such as on 13 September to attack Tangmere airfield.
The remaining three bomber types differed in their capabilities; the Heinkel 111 was the slowest; the Ju 88 was the fastest once its mainly external bomb load was dropped; and the Do 17 had the smallest bomb load.
All three bomber types suffered heavy losses from British fighters, but the Ju 88 disproportionately so.
The German bombers required constant protection by the "Luftwaffe"'s fighter force.
There were not enough Bf 109Es to support more than 300–400 bombers on any given day.
Later in the conflict, when night bombing became more frequent, all three were used.
However, due to its reduced bomb load, the lighter Do 17 was used less than the He 111 and Ju 88 for this purpose.
On the British side, three bomber types were mostly used on night operations against targets such as factories, invasion ports and railway centres; the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, the Handley-Page Hampden and the Vickers Wellington were classified as heavy bombers by the RAF, although the Hampden was a medium bomber comparable to the He 111.
The twin-engined Bristol Blenheim and the obsolescent single-engined Fairey Battle were both light bombers; the Blenheim was the most numerous of the aircraft equipping RAF Bomber Command and was used in attacks against shipping, ports, airfields and factories on the continent by day and by night.
The Fairey Battle squadrons, which had suffered heavy losses in daylight attacks during the Battle of France, were brought up to strength with reserve aircraft and continued to operate at night in attacks against the invasion ports, until the Battle was withdrawn from UK front line service in October 1940.
  Date: 17–18 June  Target: Kagoshima Urban Area  Bomber Command Mission: 206 Mission: 29.
This was the first in a series of night fire raids against minor Japanese cities (cities with a population of less than 300,000 persons).
At this juncture in the bombing campaign against Japan, the XXI BC had four Bomb Wings to draw upon but attacking the urban areas of minor Japanese cities normally required only one BW to do the job.
Therefore, on attack night, each BW was assigned a separate Japanese city.
On this date, the 330th BG joined the three other BGs of the 314th BW to attack the city of Kagoshima on the south coast of Kyūshū with a population of 182,000.
The BG deposited 203 tons of IE and the average tons per aircraft were as follows: 457th Squadron 7.4 tons per AC, the 458th Squadron 9.2 tons per AC and the 459th Squadron 7.3 tons per AC These average masked large individual plane differences.
Planes departed at about 17/1700G and returned at 18/0800G.
These night missions typically lasted 14 to 15 hours.
In this case, later photo analysis of damage to Kagoshima indicated that approximately 44% of the built-up area was burned out.
Keyes indicated that on this night mission the AP was military installations and staging areas.
The night was clear over the target for K-58 with bombs away at 18/0033G from .
The 314th BW History states that 74 planes bombed by radar, 8 visually and 21 by radar with visual correction.
There were no planes lost and no casualties from the 330th BG. 
In the Western European Theatre of World War II, air power became crucial throughout the war, both in tactical and strategic operations (respectively, battlefield and long-range).
Superior German aircraft, aided by ongoing introduction of design and technology innovations, allowed the German armies to overrun Western Europe with great speed in 1940, largely assisted by lack of Allied aircraft, which in any case lagged in design and technical development during the slump in research investment after the Great Depression.
Since the end of World War I, the French Air Force had been badly neglected, as military leaders preferred to spend money on ground armies and static fortifications to fight another World War I-style war.
As a result, by 1940, the French Air Force had only 1562 planes and was together with 1070 RAF planes facing 5,638 Luftwaffe fighters and fighter-bombers.
Most French airfields were located in north-east France, and were quickly overrun in the early stages of the campaign.
The Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom possessed some very advanced fighter planes, such as Spitfires and Hurricanes, but these were not useful for attacking ground troops on a battlefield, and the small number of planes dispatched to France with the British Expeditionary Force were destroyed fairly quickly.
Subsequently, the Luftwaffe was able to achieve air superiority over France in 1940, giving the German military an immense advantage in terms of reconnaissance and intelligence.
German aircraft rapidly achieved air superiority over France in early 1940, allowing the Luftwaffe to begin a campaign of strategic bombing against British cities.
With France es based near the English Channel were able to launch raids on London and other cities during the Blitz, with varying degrees of success.
After World War I, the concept of massed aerial bombing—"The bomber will always get through"—had become very popular with politicians and military leaders seeking an alternative to the carnage of trench warfare, and as a result, the air forces of Britain, France, and Germany had developed fleets of bomber planes to enable this (France's bomber wing was severely neglected, whilst Germany's bombers were developed in secret as they were explicitly forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles).
The bombing of Shanghai by the Imperial Japanese Navy on January 28, 1932, and August 1937 and the bombings during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), had demonstrated the power of strategic bombing, and so air forces in Europe and the United States came to view bomber aircraft as extremely powerful weapons which, in theory, could bomb an enemy nation into submission on their own.
As a result, the fear of bombers triggered major developments in aircraft technology.
Nazi Germany had put only one large, long-range strategic bomber (the Heinkel He 177 Greif, with many delays and problems) into production, while the America Bomber concept resulted only in prototypes.
The Spanish Civil War had proved that tactical dive-bombing using Stukas was a very efficient way of destroying enemy troops concentrations, and so resources and money had been devoted to the development of smaller bomber craft.
As a result, the Luftwaffe was forced to attack London in 1940 with heavily overloaded Heinkel and Dornier medium bombers, and even with the unsuitable Junkers Ju 87.
These bombers were painfully slow—Italian engineers had been unable to develop sufficiently large piston aircraft engines (those that were produced tended to explode through extreme overheating), and so the bombers used for the Battle of Britain were woefully undersized.
As German bombers had not been designed for long-range strategic missions, they lacked sufficient defenses.
The Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter escorts had not been equipped to carry enough fuel to guard the bombers on both the outbound and return journeys, and the longer-range Bf 110s could be outmanoeuvred by the short-range British fighters.
(A bizarre feature of the war was how long it took to conceive of the Drop tank.)
The air defense was well organized and equipped with effective radar that survived the bombing.
As a result, German bombers were shot down in large numbers, and were unable to inflict enough damage on cities and military-industrial targets to force Britain out of the war in 1940 or to prepare for the planned invasion.
British long-range bomber planes such as the Short Stirling had been designed before 1939 for strategic flights and given a large armament, but their technology still suffered from numerous flaws.
The smaller and shorter ranged Bristol Blenheim, the RAF's most-used bomber, was defended by only one hydraulically operated machine-gun turret, and whilst this appeared sufficient, it was soon revealed that the turret was a pathetic defence against squadrons of German fighter planes.
American bomber planes such as the B-17 Flying Fortress had been built before the war as the only adequate long-range bombers in the world, designed to patrol the long American coastlines.
Defended by as many as six machine-gun turrets providing 360° cover, the B-17s were still vulnerable without fighter protection even when used in large formations.
Despite the abilities of Allied bombers, though, Germany was not quickly crippled by Allied air raids.
At the start of the war the vast majority of bombs fell miles from their targets, as poor navigation technology ensured that Allied airmen frequently could not find their targets at night.
The bombs used by the Allies were very high-tech devices, and mass production meant that the precision bombs were often made sloppily and so failed to explode.
German industrial production actually rose continuously from 1940 to 1945, despite the best efforts of the Allied air forces to cripple industry.
Significantly, the bomber offensive kept the revolutionary Type XXI U-Boat from entering service during the war.
Moreover, Allied air raids had a serious propaganda impact on the German government, all prompting Germany to begin serious development on air defence technology—in the form of fighter planes.
The jet aircraft age began during the war with the development of the Heinkel He 178, the first true turbojet.
Late in the war the Germans brought in the first operational Jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 262.
However, despite their technological edge, German jets were overwhelmed by Allied air superiority, frequently being destroyed on or near the airstrip.
Other jet aircraft, such as the British Gloster Meteor, which flew missions but never saw combat, did not significantly distinguish themselves from top-line piston-driven aircraft.
Aircraft saw rapid and broad development during the war to meet the demands of aerial combat and address lessons learned from combat experience.
From the open cockpit airplane to the sleek jet fighter, many different types were employed, often designed for very specific missions.
Aircraft were used in anti-submarine warfare against German U-Boats, by the Germans to mine shipping lanes and by the Japanese against previously formidable Royal Navy battleships such as .
During the war the Germans produced various Glide bomb weapons, which were the first smart bombs; the V-1 flying bomb, which was the first cruise missile weapon; and the V-2 rocket, the first ballistic missile weapon.
The last of these was the first step into the space age as its trajectory took it through the stratosphere, higher and faster than any aircraft.
This later led to the development of the Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Wernher Von Braun led the V-2 development team and later emigrated to the United States where he contributed to the development of the Saturn V rocket, which took men to the moon in 1969. 
The strategic bombing conducted in World War II was unlike anything the world had seen before.
The campaigns conducted in Europe, in China and at the end of the war over Japan, could involve thousands of aircraft dropping tens of thousands of tons of munitions over a single city.
The practice of area bombardment came to prominence during World War II with the use of large numbers of unguided gravity bombs, often with a high proportion of incendiary bombs, to effect indiscriminate bombing of the target region – either to destroy personnel and/or materiel, or as a means to demoralize the enemy.
This, in high enough concentration was capable of producing a firestorm effect.
The high explosive bombs were often on timers and used to intimidate or kill firemen putting out the fires caused by the incendiaries.
Initially, this was effected by multiple aircraft, often returning to the target in waves.
Nowadays, a large bomber or missile can be used to create the same effect on a small area (an airfield, for example) by releasing a relatively large number of smaller bombs.
Strategic-bombing campaigns were conducted in Europe and Asia.
The Germans and Japanese made use of mostly twin-engined bombers with a payload generally less than 5000 pounds (2268 kg), and never produced larger craft to any great extent.
By comparison, the British and Americans (who started the war with predominantly similarly-sized bombers) developed their strategic force based upon much larger four-engined bombers for their strategic campaigns.
The payload carried by these planes ranged from for the B-17 Flying Fortress on long-range missions, to for the B-24 Liberator, for the Avro Lancaster, and B-29 Superfortress, with some speciality aircraft, such as the 'Special B' Avro Lancaster carrying () Grand Slam.
During the first year of the war in Europe, strategic bombing was developed through trial and error.
The "Luftwaffe" had been attacking both civilian and military targets from the very first day of the war, when Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.
A strategic-bombing campaign was launched by the Germans as a precursor to the invasion of England to force the RAF to engage "Luftwaffe" and so be destroyed either on the ground or in the air.
When that tactic failed, and the RAF won the Battle of Britain, the Germans launched their night time Blitz hoping to break British morale and cow the British into making peace.
Initially, the Luftwaffe raids took place in daylight, then changed to night bombing attacks when losses became unsustainable.
The RAF, initially espousing a precision-bombing doctrine, also switched to night bombing, also due to excessive losses.
Before the Rotterdam Blitz on 14 May 1940 the British restricted themselves to tactical bombing west of the Rhine and naval installations.
The day after the Rotterdam Blitz a new directive was issued to the RAF to attack targets in the Ruhr, including oil plants and other civilian industrial targets which aided the German war effort, such as blast furnaces that at night were self-illuminating.
The first RAF raid on the interior of Germany took place on the night of 15/16 May 1940.
After the Butt Report (released in September 1941) proved the inadequacy of RAF Bomber Command training methods and equipment, the RAF adopted an area-attack strategy, by which it hoped to detrimentally affect Germany's war production, her powers of resistance (by destroying resources and forcing Germany to divert resources from her front lines to defend her air space), and her morale.
The RAF dramatically improved its navigation so that on average its bombs hit closer to target.
The United States Army Air Forces adopted a policy of daylight precision bombing for greater accuracy as, for example, during the Schweinfurt raids.
That doctrine, based on the erroneous supposition that bombers could adequately defend themselves against air attack, entailed much higher American losses until long-range fighter escorts (e.g.
the Mustang) became available.
Conditions in the European theatre made it very difficult to achieve the accuracy that had been possible using the exceptional and top-secret Norden optical bombsight in the clear skies over the desert bombing ranges of Nevada and California.
Raids over Europe commonly took place in conditions of very poor visibility, with targets partly or wholly obscured by thick cloud, smokescreens or smoke from fires started by previous raids.
As a result, bomb loads were regularly dropped "blind" using dead-reckoning methods little different from those used by the RAF night bombers.
In addition, only the leading bomber in a formation actually utilized the Norden sight, the rest of the formation dropping their bombs only when they saw the lead aircraft's bombload falling away.
Since even a very tight bomber formation could cover a vast area, the scatter of bombs was likely to be considerable.
Add to these difficulties the disruptive effects of increasingly accurate anti-aircraft fire and head-on attacks by fighter aircraft and the theoretical accuracy of daylight bombing was often hard to achieve.
Strategic bombing was initially a way of taking the war into Europe while Allied ground forces were no closer to fighting Germans there than North Africa.
Between them, Allied air forces claimed to be able to bomb "around the clock".
In fact, few targets were ever hit by British and American forces the same day, the strategic isolation of Normandy on D-Day and the bombing of Dresden in February, 1945 being exceptions rather than the rule.
There were generally no coordinated plans for around-the-clock bombing of any target.
In some cases, single missions have been considered to constitute strategic bombing.
The British bombing of Peenemünde was such an event, as was the bombing of the Ruhr dams.
The Peenemünde mission delayed Nazi Germany's V-2 program enough that it did not become a major factor in the outcome of the war.
Strategic bombing in Europe never reached the decisive completeness the American campaign against Japan achieved, helped in part by the fragility of Japanese housing, which was particularly vulnerable to firebombing through the use of incendiary bombs.
The destruction of German infrastructure became apparent, but the Allied campaign against Germany only really succeeded when the Allies began targeting oil refineries and transportation in the last year of the war.
At the same time, strategic bombing of Germany was used as a morale booster for the Allies in the period before the land war resumed in Western Europe in June 1944.
In the Pacific theatre, if the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service frequently used strategic bombing over large Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Chongqing, organized strategic bombing on a large scale by the Japanese seldom occurred.
The Japanese military in most places advanced quickly enough that a strategic bombing campaign was unnecessary, and the Japanese aircraft industry was incapable of producing truly strategic bombers in any event.
In those places where it was required, the smaller Japanese bombers (in comparison to British and American types) did not carry a bombload sufficient to inflict the sort of damage regularly occurring at that point in the war in Europe, or later in Japan.
The development of the B-29 gave the United States a bomber with sufficient range to reach the Japanese Home Islands from the safety of American bases in the Pacific or Western China.
The capture of the Japanese island of Iwo Jima further enhanced the capabilities that the Americans possessed in their strategic bombing campaign.
high-explosive and incendiary bombs were used against Japan to devastating effect, with greater indiscriminate loss of life in the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 than was caused either by the Dresden mission, or the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
The final development of strategic bombing in World War II was the use of nuclear ordnance.
On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States conducted atomic bombing raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Both cities were destroyed with enormous loss of life and psychological shock.
On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan, stating: "Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives.
Should We continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects; or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors?
This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers."
In the Second World War, Manston was heavily bombed during the Battle of Britain.
Barnes Wallis used the base to test his bouncing bomb on the coast at nearby Reculver prior to the Dambusters raid.
Hawker Typhoon and Meteor squadrons were based at Manston during the Second World War.
Its position close to the front line and its long and broad runway (built during the war, along with the runways at Woodbridge and Carnaby near Bridlington) meant the airfield was heavily used by badly damaged planes that had suffered from ground fire, collisions, or air attack but retained a degree of airworthiness.
The airfield became a "graveyard" for heavy bombers and less-damaged aircraft, offering spare parts for allied aircraft in need of repair.
The museums on site display some aerial views dating from this era and the post-war years.