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Abombardment is an attack byartillery fire or bydropping bombs fromaircraft onfortifications,combatants, orcities andbuildings.
Prior toWorld War I, the term was only applied to the bombardment of defenseless or undefended objects, houses, public buildings, etc. It was only loosely employed to describe artillery attacks upon forts or fortified positions in preparation for assaults byinfantry.[1] Since then, it has come to mean any mass attack delivered by artillery or short-range tacticalmissiles, and later,aerial bombardment delivered by aircraft or long-range missiles.
In its old strict sense, the term was only applied to the bombardment of defenseless or undefended objects, houses, public buildings, etc., by an assailant with the object of disheartening his opponent, and specially to force thecivilianpopulation and authorities of a besieged place to persuade their military commander tocapitulate before the actual defenses of the place have been reduced to impotence.[1] The practice of employing artillery to achieve these ends was especially common up until World War I; since then long-range artillery bombardment has been joined by aerial bombardment delivered by aircraft or missiles.
Bombardment can only achieve its objective when the amount of suffering inflicted uponnon-combatants is sufficient to break down their resolution, and when the commander permits himself to be influenced or coerced by the sufferers. A threat of bombardment will sometimes induce the target tosurrender, but instances of its fulfillment being followed by success are rare; in general, with a determined commander, bombardments fail in their objective. Further, intentionally intense fire at a large target, unlike the slow, steady and minutely accurate artillery attacks directed upon the fortifications, requires the expenditure of large quantities ofammunition and wears out the guns of the attack. Bombardments are, however, frequently resorted to in order to test the temper of the garrison and the civilian population, a notable instance being theSiege of Strasbourg in 1870.[1]
The term has evolved during the twentieth century to incorporate broader massed artillery attacks by one army against another, for example the front wide bombardment prior to the 1916 attack on the Somme or the massed bombardments precedingOperation Uranus duringWorld War II.[citation needed]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bombardment".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 182.
