Night bomber

A night bomber is a bomber aircraft intended specifically for carrying out bombing missions at night. The term is now mostly of historical significance. Night bombing began in World War I and was widespread during World War II. A number of modern aircraft types are designed primarily for nighttime bombing, but air forces no longer refer to them as night bombers. More common terms today include interdictor and strike fighter, and such aircraft tend to have all-weather, day-or-night capabilities. Strategic bombing and night bombing were new in World War I, and there was much experimentation at night with aircraft such as the Gotha G.IV, Gotha G.V, Handley Page Type O, and various giant airplanes such as the Riesenflugzeuge and the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets. Navigation was difficult and precision was almost nonexistent but the psychological effect was strong. Night bombing worked as a terror weapon. Prior to the introduction of radar, aircraft flying at night were nearly impossible to locate accurately enough for attack. Acoustic location was used to obtain preliminary rough coordinates. Searchlights scanning the sky could illuminate aircraft by chance and might track them long enough for anti-aircraft artillery to fire a few shots. Alternatively, night fighters were used for interception; they either cooperated with searchlights or tried to spot the bombers in the moonlight. The success rate of such defences were so low that it was widely believed that "The bomber will always get through", in the words of British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Since World War I, the bomber had been seen as a terror weapon, and was later seen as a primary strategic weapon of total war. As Baldwin later said, their primary purpose was to "kill the enemy's women and children more rapidly than they killed yours". As aircraft capabilities grew, so did their defensive firepower. By the mid-1930s, opinions were changing and the idea of daylight raids of aircraft providing their own self-defense came to the fore.