Air Force Roll in 2nd World War

Germany was the first country to organize regular air attacks on enemy infrastructure. In World War I it used its zeppelins (airships) to drop bombs on British cities. At that time, Britain did have aircraft, though her airships were less advanced than the zeppelins and were very rarely used for attacking; instead they were usually used to spy on German U-boats (submarines). Fixed wing aircraft at the time were quite primitive, being able to achieve velocities comparable to that of modern automobiles and mounting minimal weaponry and equipment. Aerial services were still largely a new animal, and relatively unreliable machines and limited training resulted in stupendously low life expectancies for early military aviators.[citation needed]
By the time World War II began, planes had become much safer, faster and more reliable. They were adopted as standard for bombing raids and taking out other aircraft because they were much faster than airships. The World's largest military Air Force by the start of the Second World War in 1939 was the Red Air Force, and although much depleted, it would stage the largest air operations of WWII over the four years of combat with the German Luftwaffe. The war's most important air operation, known as the Battle of Britain, took place during 1940 over Britain and the English Channel between Britain's Royal Air Force and Germany's Luftwaffe over a period of several months. In the end Britain emerged victorious and this caused Adolf Hitler to give up his plan to invade Britain. Other prominent operations during the Second World War include the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941, the Allied bombing of Germany during 1942-1944, and the Red Air Force operations in support of strategic ground offensives on the Eastern Front.