How far could a WWII American bomber fly without refueling? Nt

[raccoon]

[Docreed2003]

1. Depends on the bomber and the bomb load

If I recall correctly, a B17 with a standard bomb load had a range of around 2,000 miles.

[brewens]

2. Look up B-17 and B-24, it will give their range. I'm pretty sure those B-24's could stay in the

air for 16 hours or more unloaded. My dad was on one in the Pacific, mostly long range reconnaissance.

[Mister Ed]

3. B-29's flew round-trip from SaIpan to Tokyo.

Almost 3,000 miles round-trip.

What prompts the question?

[raccoon]

5. I'm reading a book called THE SHORT AMERICAN CENTURY:A POSTMORTEM.

Edited by Andrew J Bacevich.

In chapter 2, “the origins and uses of American hyper power” by David M Kennedy, he writes about the use of “ Strategic bombing“ in Europe. Against Germany.

“for those who could carry it off, strategic bombing promised rich rewards: a brief war, with relatively few casualties, and minimum disruption of one’s own social and economic structure.” (Bacevich, p 22). Then on p. 30-31, “While Japan in the first half of 1945 adopted a primitive wind–driven technology [balloons carrying firebombs] in a last desperate effort to strike at the Americans in their heartland, huge B-29 bomber streams flew nightly to Japan from the Mariana islands.”

So I started thinking, why couldn’t they do the
strategic bombing on Japan as well? And I thought that might be because of the distance to the Japanese home islands from wherever the Americans could have a base. Until much later in the war.

I am certainly no expert on military strategy or American bombers in WWII, so chime in if you think otherwise.

[Sherman A1]

7. The island hopping campaign was in part

About getting bases close enough to Japan for the aircraft to be in range. There was no air to air refueling until the 1950s.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

9. Yep

And it's not just being in range. The island itself had to be large enough to accommodate the bombers. Combat loaded bombers required at least a mile lone runway to take off, if I remember right.

Once we were in range, we firebombed the hell out of the Japanese. Tokyo was basically burned to the ground. The primary reason Hiroshima was chosen as the first nuclear bomb target was because it was one of the few cities left that was mostly untouched from our bombing raids. We wanted to see the full destructive effects of the bomb on an intact city.

[sarisataka]

4. There are a lot of variables

Which affect the answer to that question.

With maximum load at take off the ranges for the three large US bomber types are:

B-17- 1100 mi
B-24- 1450 mi
B-29- 3250 mi

These ranges could increase or decrease depending on the load the plane carried and which model of variant is being discussed.

[Sherman A1]

6. Really varied by type, load and the addition

Or subtraction of such things as Bomb bay fuel tanks. Weather would be a factor as well.

[mitch96]

8. Yup, range would be reduced if they ran into a head wind...

Seems like the formula was to destroy the enemy's air power thru bombing the manufacturing/production and infrastructure. ONce in the control of the air, a land invasion would go forth. That's why Hitler could not/would not invade England.. They lost the battle for air supremacy over England..
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