San Diego, California • December 29, 1939 On this date in 1939 a prototype 4‑engine heavy bomber took off from San Diego’s Lindberg Field on its maiden flight. The flight lasted 17 minutes. Designed by Consolidated Aircraft, the prototype was initially known in-house as Model 32. Besides its distinctive twin tails and slab sides that allowed for…
London, England • August 4, 1944 In early June 1944 the Royal Air Force began deploying the first of several bunker-buster bombs—the 4,000 lb./1.8 metric ton Tallboy S (small), Tallboy M (medium) weighing in at 12,000 lb./5.4 metric tons, and its successor Grand Slam (Tallboy L, large) at 22,000 lb./9.97 metric tons, whose blast yield was equivalent to 6.5 tons of TNT. Meanwhile the United States…
Ploesti (Ploiești), Romania • August 1, 1943 Allied war planners had long favored a second, much more damaging air strike on the Ploesti (Ploiești) oil complex, the center of Romania’s natural oil industry some 35 miles/56 km north of the capital, Bucharest. In mid-June 1942, 13 U.S. B‑24 Liberators lifted off from a British airfield in Egypt, crossed…