With these and other visionaries, the idea of strategic bombing begins to take place. However, there is still lack of actual implementations. The first main factor is that the society has the desire to disarm and demilitarized after the mass destruction of World War I. Second, the Great Depression that affects the world makes it hard for the governments to put more money into developing air power (Patton). It is not until World War II does the strategic bombing really being put to test. Even though at the beginning of World War II, the United States takes a neutral position, due to the vast distance against the battlefields, by 1939, the US becomes the place where the most advanced civilian aircrafts are built and they can successfully apply to military aircrafts (IWM).
When aircrafts become one of the most prominent weapons in World War II, there are still a lot to improve. Britain and the United States agree that strategic bombing is the way to decrease Germany’s fighting ability. Both of the countries operate under similar doctrine: “Daylight precision bombardment of German war industry was the most efficient way to end the war”. However, the results are not too satisfactory in the beginning. In fact, Britain is shocked by the fact that they lose heavily to the Luftwaffe due to the lack of long range fighter escort. To decrease its lose, Britain switches to night operations in 1940. Although its survival rate goes up, the actual results are minimum; weather, crew experiences, and rader precision all affect the end results. Thus in Casablanca Conference, 1942, Britain and the United States agree that they are going to start the “Casablanca Directive”, in which Britain operates at night, and the US operates during the day. During this time, Britain’s strategic bombing shifts focus towards destroying Germany’s morale rather than calculating the real destroy impacts (Patton).
The United States has more confidence in its bombing weaponry, especially towards aircraft series B-17 “Flying Fortress” and B-24 “Liberator”. As we can see from the above horizontal bar chart "Aircraft Series the Allies Use in World War II Aerial Missions" that these two types of aircraft dominate most of the missions. B-17 is designed for precision daylight bombing, and to be able to fly above the antiaircraft artillery (Guilmartin). The Americans believe that their B-17 can “drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet”. B-24 enters service in 1941, and is first used by the Royal Air Force. Considerably modern in its time, B-24 often serves alongside B-17 in bombing missions. It also serves as maritime patrol aircraft and helps closing “air-gap” in battles (Hickman). Although these two aircrafts prove their effectiveness through time, the end results are not as satisfying at first. Like Britain, the United States’ bombing missions also suffer from bad weather and feeble rader precision. Moreover, the different distributions of total pounds of bombs in aircraft also decrease the effectiveness of destroying the targets.