April 26, 1937 - During the Spanish Civil War, aircraft from the German Condor Legion and Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie (below) bomb the Republican town of Guernica in northern Spain as part of their support of Generalissimo Francisco Franco's Nationalist cause. Arriving in multiple waves, the bombers ignited a firestorm that destroyed the majority of the town and inflicted massive civilian casualties.
Planned as part of a larger campaign to capture the city of Bilbao, the attack appears to originally have been intended to destroy bridges and other infrastructure. Subsequent evidence suggests that the widespread bombing of the town may have been one of the first instances of "terror bombing." The attack has been preserved in popluar memory by Pablo Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica.
Photograph Courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org
Comments
The fact that Guernica was filled with gunsmiths working in their own homes, the largest industry in town, doesn’t seem to be relevant in the portrait History made of that small scale aerial bombing. But perhaps it should.