At War with the Soviets

In the summer of 1944, units of the Eighth and Fifteenth United States Army Air Forces began flying to and from bases inside the Soviet Union. Called "shuttle bombing," this operation, code-named Frantic, was ostensibly designed to hit targets throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. American planners, however, hoped to demonstrate the value of strategic bombing to the Soviets and, in the process, convince them to allow American units to fly against Japan from bases in Siberia. Beyond that, Washington hoped Frantic would bring the US and the USSR closer together. As a military operation, Frantic's impact on the air war against Germany was relatively insignificant; as a political maneuver, it was a dismal failure.