Bombers - a type of infantry armed with hand bombs and grenades to defeat mainly enemy personnel and destroy fortifications. They are the forerunners of the grenadiers (the grenadiers used bombs to destroy enemy buildings and fortifications). Many bombers were in partisan armies of different times, especially in the forces of the Resistance Movement during the Second World War.
History
For the first time a similar type of infantry appeared in Russia in the XIV century with the advent of gunpowder and cannons. In the 17th century, the further development of this type of infantry was the grenadiers , who threw grenades and bombs on the enemy’s living force, but on fortifications and protected buildings (in the 19th century, the units of the grenadiers began to gradually disband).
However, in the XVIII - XIX centuries, bombers were an integral part of the armies of the Balkan peoples who fought with the Turkish yoke : they were common in the detachments of Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Greeks. After Turkey recognized Serbia as an independent state, a hand bomb entered the official armament of the army of the Kingdom of Serbia, and soon the bombers, who were called “bombers” in Serbia, became a separate type of infantry in Serbia.
During the First World War, Serbian bombers successfully operated in 1915-1916, conducting military operations against the troops of Austria-Hungary. During the Second World War, units appeared in the ranks of the partisan communist movement, behind which the Serbian name Bombies was fixed: these soldiers formed the backbone of assault detachments;
In the Red Army, bombers were part of the assault engineering-sapper brigades during the Great Patriotic War. For the first time these fighters appeared in the Battle of Stalingrad and became indispensable in urban and street battles. As a rule, during the storming of buildings occupied by the Germans, bombers first threw a grenade through a window or door, and after the explosion they fired at the room with a submachine gun. Numerous assault groups proved useful in the assault of Königsberg, Budapest and Berlin.
Nowadays, bombers as a separate type of troops almost do not exist, since their skills are trained by fighters of special assault groups, special forces units, etc. However, in the postwar years, bombers were an integral part of the land armies of Algeria, Cuba, Malawi, Kenya and Vietnam.
See also
- Bombas
Literature
Military encyclopedia , Beograd, 1970, Prga, country 712 and 713.