A B-2 Spirit stealth bomber stands out against the clouds during a flight over Missouri in May 2020. The B-2 recently took part in a SINKEX exercise in the Philippine Sea, sinking an unidentified former US Navy target ship. (Shutterstock/Matthew Cone)

The B-2 Spirit Just ‘Killed’ Another Ship in the Pacific

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During recent military exercises near the Philippines, a B-2 Spirit bomber sank a decommissioned US Navy ship using an LRASM missile—suggesting it could do the same in a hot war.

Less than a decade after the first manned flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, an early airplane was employed to strike an adversary’s warship. The incident occurred on May 10, 1913, when Mexican revolutionary Venustiano Carranza’s forces’ aircraft dropped dynamite bombs on Federalist gunboats in Guaymas during the Mexican Revolution. Just two years later, during World War I, a Royal Naval Air Service Short Type 184 Seaplane conducted the first-ever air-launched torpedo attack against a Turkish merchant ship in the Sea of Marmara.

These were among the dozens of early demonstrations of the capabilities of aircraft against warships, serving as proof of concept and laying the groundwork for the development of the dive bomber during World War II. During that conflict, specialized “dive bombers”—most notoriously Nazi Germany’s Ju 87 Stuka, renowned for its ear-piercing shriek during bombing runs—destroyed........

© The National Interest