Thousand bomber attack
Thousand bomber attack was a term used in World War II for exceptionally large air raids on German cities. It is originally derived from the series of attacks carried out for propaganda reasons by the British RAF Bomber Command's 1000 bomber raids , which began with Operation Millennium , the air raid on Cologne on the night of May 30th to 31st, 1942. This was followed by two more attacks with 1000 bombers on Essen and Bremen , before the attacks were initially stopped in favor of other targets. In the further course of the Second World War there were several more attacks in which more than 1,000 heavy bombers took part, including against Berlin . The Bomber Command mainly flew night attacks, the American Eighth Air Force attacked mainly during the day. Towards the end of the war, both allies were able to regularly use large fleets of bombers of approximately 1,000 or more heavy bombers for their attacks. The German side referred to those attacks in which these fleets were used against a spatially limited target as a thousand bomber attacks.
The last major raid by the Royal Air Force with 979 bombers was on the island of Heligoland on April 18, 1945 .