Allied Aerial Operations in World War II
World War II (WW II) was the largest and deadliest conflict in history, and it involved virtually every part of the world between 1939 and 1945. During WWII, air power was implemented to achieve strategic objectives for the first time in history, and strategic bombing became a fundamental part of military combat. The U.S. Department of Defense defines strategic bombing as a military strategy used with the goal of "destroying enemy military and infrastructure targets and lowering their morale." The Allied forces relied on strategic bombing extensively during the conflict, attempting to break the morale of the enemy population by ceaselessly bombing cities, lines of communication, and factories throughout Italy, Germany, Japan, and their territories. This project aims to analyze and present some of the main characteristics of the Allied aerial military operations carried out during WWII throughout the world. This visualization will help historians, strategists, or simple WWII enthusiasts have a more intuitive view of the strategies and tactics behind aerial warfare in WWII. The Allied countries included in this analysis are the ones from the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. The data used for this project come from the Theatre History of Operations Reports, or THOR, an historical data collection project developed and researched by U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Jenns Robertson. The database was created in 2006 and was made available to the public upon approval of the U.S. Department of Defense in 2012. The dataset was downloaded from the data sciene online community data.world in June 2020 and was cleaned and processed using Python and Excel. All the visualizations were made using Tableau Desktop. I have uploaded some screenshots of my charts that outline some of the findings of this project:
