page_title: Aerial bombing of cities
section_title: World War I
hierarchical_section_title: Aerial bombing of cities / World War I
context_page_description: The aerial bombing of cities in warfare is an optional element of strategic bombing which became widespread during World War I. The bombing of cities grew to a vast scale in World War II, and is still practiced today. The development of aerial bombardment marked an increased capacity of armed forces to deliver ordnance from the air against combatants, military bases, and factories, with a greatly reduced risk to its ground forces. Civilian and non-combatant casualties in bombed cities have variously been a purposeful result of the bombings, or unavoidable collateral damage depending on intent and technology. A number of multilateral efforts have been made to restrict the use of aerial bombardment so as to protect non-combatants.
context_section_description: The first civilian target to be bombed from the air was the Belgian city of Antwerp. This city, at that moment the National Redoubt of Belgium, was bombed during the night of 24–25 August 1914. Instead of targeting the surrounding fortresses, the Zeppelin LZ 25's intention was to bomb the clearly distinguishable historical centre of the city. The zeppelin dropped approximately ten bombs, killing ten people and injuring forty.
  The British Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) undertook the first Entente strategic bombing missions on 22 September 1914 and 8 October, when it bombed the Zeppelin bases in Cologne and Düsseldorf. The aeroplanes carried twenty-pound bombs, and at least one airship was destroyed. On 19 January 1915 two German Zeppelins dropped 24 fifty-kilogram (110 lb) high-explosive bombs and ineffective three-kilogram incendiaries on the English towns of Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn, and the surrounding villages; in all, four people were killed, 16 injured, and monetary damage was estimated at £7,740.
  London was bombed for the first time on 30 May 1915. In July 1916, the German government allowed directed raids against urban centers, sparking 23 airship raids in 1916 in which 125 tons of ordnance were dropped, killing 293 people and injuring 691. Gradually British air defenses improved and the Germans also introduced large bomber aircraft for bombing Britain. In 1917 and 1918 there were only eleven Zeppelin raids against England, and the final raid occurred on 5 August 1918, which resulted in the death of KK Peter Strasser, commander of the German Naval Airship Department. By the end of the war, 51 raids had been undertaken, in which 5,806 bombs were dropped, killing 557 people and injuring 1,358. In the course of the Zeppelin raids the Germans lost more than half their airships and 40% of their crew. It has been argued that the raids were effective far beyond material damage inflicted, in diverting and hampering wartime production, and diverting twelve squadrons and over 10,000 men to air defenses.
  The British developed an Independent Force of long-range bombers that could bomb Berlin, but the war ended before these raids began.
  After the war, bombers' increasing sophistication led to the general belief that aerial bombing would both destroy cities and be impossible to stop; as Stanley Baldwin stated in a 1932 speech, "The bomber will always get through".
caption: German airship Schütte Lanz SL2 bombing Warsaw in 1914.
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