From Today I Found Out.
At 2:38 A.M. on January 17, 1991, a UN coalition of 34 countries led by the United States launched Operation Desert Storm, a military campaign aimed at expelling the forces of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The operation opened with a massive aerial bombardment campaign, with over 2,000 aircraft flying round-the-clock missions deep into occupied Kuwait and Iraq itself. Over the next 43 days, Coalition aircraft flew a staggering 109,876 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of ordnance on Iraqi military and civilian infrastructure. In a masterfully coordinated series of strikes, F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters dropped laser-guided weapons on communications centres while Tomahawk cruise missiles targeted power stations and command bunkers, Apache attack helicopters destroyed radar installations, and B-52 Stratofortress bombers carpet-bombed Iraqi positions. The effect was devastating: within hours, the Iraqi Air Force had been all but annihilated and vast swathes of Iraqi troops had fled in terror, allowing Coalition aircraft to achieve total air superiority over Kuwait and Iraq and press home attacks against Iraqi positions. Under this onslaught, the Iraqi forces crumbled; when the ground campaign, Operation Desert Sabre, began 38 days later, it took only 100 hours to expel the invaders from Kuwait.
The Desert Storm air campaign was one of the most effective and decisive military operations in modern history- a textbook demonstration of the devastating power of aerial warfare. But while today air power forms the cornerstone of nearly every military force on earth, this was not always the case. For despite we humans’ rather persistent habit of turning any new technology into some sort of weapon or to use in porn, in the early days of aviation military planners were slow to recognize the extraordinary potential of the aeroplane, seeing it as little more than a useless novelty. Then, on November 1, 1911, a lone pilot climbed into a primitive fabric-covered monoplane and set off over the North African desert on a mission that would forever change the face of modern warfare. This is the story of history’s first bombardment by aeroplane.
Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Simon Whistler
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
