History Main / AirstrikeImpossible

* The Fairey Swordfish also saw action against the ''Bismarck'', The Kreigsmarine's most heavily-armed and heavily-armoured battleship. The most notable sortie was a last, desperate gamble; with night coming on fast, and with ''Bismarck'' expected to be in range of German air cover by morning, the crews had to press their luck to the extreme. One Swordfish took an estimated ''175 hits'' from flak shrapnel, but stayed in the air. One pilot, ready to release his torpedo, was told to wait by his navigator - who was hanging upside down out of the cockpit, gauging the waves for the best time to release. When they did, the ''Bismarck'' turned sharply, took the hit at the stern, but sailed on. Dispirited at their failure, the crews returned... only to be told that the ''Bismarck'' was behaving erratically. She had not recovered from her evasive turn and had ended up going North-West, ''away'' from the safety of the French coast and Luftwaffe air cover. They had succeeded in damaging her steering, buying vital time for Admiral Tovey's fleet of battleships to close the distance, choose their moment, engage with, and ultimately sink the ''Bismarck''[[note]]... taking 50 minutes of near-continuous fire from two battleships and two heavy cruisers, which expended over 2,800 shells before the engagement was finally over - to save you pulling up your calculator, that was an average of about ''fifty-six rounds a minute'' for the best part of an hour[[/note]].

* ''Manga/Area88'': All adaptations except the video game include the early mission where the base pilots have to fly through a narrow, winding canyon to evade radar and [=SAMs=] en route to an enemy base. During the mission briefing, the base commander overlays cross-sections of the three narrowest sections of the canyon to prove that there's barely enough space for a fighter to fly through. A few of them don't make it through the canyon; even more pilots fall to the obstacle the enemy had waiting at the end, and the protagonist only survives because of [[AluminumChristmasTrees an obscure fact]] about the jet he was piloting: [[spoiler:the F-8 Crusader can fly while its wings are folded for carrier transport.]]

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Film/TheDamBusters'', based on a RealLife example. To collapse a concrete dam requires a very large amount of explosive force to be delivered within a very concentrated area at the base, and that would require more precision than the RAF could achieve by simply having a Lancaster or Halifax fly overhead and dropping a 'stick' of conventional bombs. Dive bombers couldn't carry a big enough payload or sufficient fuel to reach the target dams in Germany, and modifying a light bomber to drop torpedoes was out because the Nazis had thought of that and strung netting across the width of the reservoirs. The solution was to design a bomb that could be skipped across the surface of the reservoir before sinking to the bottom, causing a "water hammer" effect when they detonated, and so a legend was born.

* ''633 Squadron'', which climaxes with a fictional assault by RAF Mosquito aircraft on a Nazi rocket fuel plant, sited at the end of a long, narrow fjord.

** Even before that, there's another mission where you end up flying through a ''very'' narrow canyon at low altitude, dodging searchlight beams all the while. Go above the altitude limit and it's an instant failure.
%% Please be careful about adding natter in the Ace Combat examples. We know they do a lot of Airstriking Impossible, but there's no need to add examples and commentary for nigh-identical canyon/tunnel/bunker run missions from each individual game in the series.

** The final mission of ''VideoGame/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown'' has you chasing down [[FinalBoss the last drone]] in a massive tunnel leading to the SpaceElevator. Said chase provides the page image. Upon arriving, you only have [[TimeLimitBoss a minute to shoot it down]] or the mission fails. Afterwards, the only way to escape is to go ''up'' the space elevator.]]

** The final mission of ''VideoGame/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown'' has you [[spoiler: chasing down [[FinalBoss the last drone]] in a massive tunnel leading to the SpaceElevator. Upon arriving, you only have [[TimeLimitBoss a minute to shoot it down]] or the mission fails. Afterwards, the only way to escape is to go ''up'' the space elevator.]]

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/AceCombat https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tunnel_run_5.png]]]]

* ''Manga/Area88'': All adaptations except the video game include the early mission where the base pilots have to fly through a narrow, winding canyon to evade radar and [=SAMs=] en route to an enemy base. (During the mission briefing, the base commander overlays cross-sections of the three narrowest sections of the canyon to prove that there's barely enough space for a fighter to fly through.) A few of them don't make it through the canyon; even more pilots fall to the obstacle the enemy had waiting at the end, and the protagonist only survives because of an obscure factoid about the jet he was piloting. ([[spoiler: [[AluminumChristmasTrees The F-8 Crusader can fly while its wings are folded for carrier transport]].]])

** ''VideoGame/{{Ace Combat 6|FiresOfLiberation}}'' had a particularly ludicrous example: during the final mission (''after'' the standard "fly underground to destroy something" bit), you have to fly down the barrel of a giant railgun.

* When Argentina landed forces on the British-controlled Falkland Islands in 1982, the nearest British ships were weeks away; plenty of time for the Argentine forces to dig in on the Falkland Islands. Even with in-air refueling, the distance from the nearest British airfield to the Falklands exceeded the maximum operational range of the best British bomber aircraft several times over. But there's nothing stopping you from refueling the tanker aircraft in-air... or refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the tanker aircraft in air... or refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the... you get the picture. The end result was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck Operation Black Buck]], launching a fleet of ''eleven'' 'Victor' tanker aircraft and a single 'Vulcan' bomber from Ascension Island (off the western coast of Africa). The Victors refuelled the Vulcan, and each other, repeatedly during the ''sixteen-hour'' journey to the Falkland Islands and back again. The primary 'Victor', which had three pilots in the two-man cockpit, was refueled four times on the approach and once more on the return. It held the record for the longest-distance bombing run until ''1991''. Oh, and they did it again - flying a total of ''five'' 12,200km sorties, out of seven attempts (the other two were cancelled due to weather or equipment problems). While considered effective in both psychological-warfare and propaganda terms, the actual effectiveness versus Argentinian readiness is still debated - for instance, the Port Stanley Airport runway was successfully hit by Black Buck 1, but while the damage proved difficult to repair, aircraft were still able to operate from the shortened runway.

%% Image kept on page per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=8vmmg1xgxw87073g8e3nld6z

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/AceCombat04ShatteredSkies https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_airstrkimpssbl_797.jpg]]]]
[-[[caption-width-right:350:[[AcePilot Mobius One]], ItsUpToYou to fly down this tunnel. And [[HeroicMime don't give me lip]] about ViolationOfCommonSense.]]-]

** Also done by Lando and Wedge in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', as they plunge into the depths of the Death Star to blast the core at short range, and then fly back out of the superstructure as they OutrunTheFireball. The same movie also has the speeder bike chase where hero and enemy have to maneuver through a ''very'' thick forest, functioning in much the same way as an asteroid field chase.

*** During the Action Prologue, Poe gives the First Order Dreadnought a nasty case of "Trench Run Disease", hugging its hull and picking off its defensive guns to clear the way for the Resistance's fleet of heavy bombers. When Hux asks why Poe's X-Wing isn't taken down, Captain Canady retorts that the lone starfighter is too small and agile for the surface cannons to intercept, and bemoans that his crew should have sent out fighters instead of thinking they're invulnerable.

* During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, one of the earliest Allied victories in the Pacific was the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid Doolittle Raid]], named for the commander, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle. To pull the raid off, they had to modify a group of twin-engined B-25 Mitchell bombers to launch from an aircraft carrier that was ''barely'' long enough to actually get land-based planes airborne,[[note]]Though, really, the B-25 was the most-suited plane for this operation at the time, since it had an impressively low takeoff speed of only 60-80 mph. [[/note]] all so they could drop a few firebombs on Japanese cities and make the Japanese think they were at greater risk of attack than they actually were.[[note]]Unimpressive as it sounds, this actually had a drastic effect on Japan's public morale and military doctrine; despite lampooning it as the "Do-Nothing Raid" in propaganda broadcasts, the attack all but shattered the idea that the Japanese home islands were protected from direct enemy attack, a prospect that had held up for ''centuries'' at least. It also prompted the IJN and IJA to begin new campaigns with the goal of destroying or taking any and all airbases that held even the ''remote'' chance of housing strategic bombers within striking distance of the home islands, since they were not aware that the planes had come from a carrier (not that the idea of B-25's coming off a carrier was particularly believable anyway), and these campaigns would eventually result in the decisive Battle of Midway in 1942.[[/note]] Most of the planes [[OneWayTrip ended up ditching in China or crashing in the sea]],[[note]]One such plane, the ''Ruptured Duck'', was flown by Lt. Ted Lawson, who would go on to write about his part in the raid and subsequent escape back to friendly lines in his novel ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'', which would later be adapted into a [[Film/ThirtySecondsOverTokyo film of the same name]]. For its part, the ''Ruptured Duck'' crashed offshore of the Chinese mainland as Lawson attempted to land it on a beach, hoping to land it intact while his crew got their bearings and located the nearest friendly airfield to fly to, but a misjudgment in distance caused it to come down in the water instead, and the crew hastily abandoned the plane as it sank. ''Ruptured Duck'' itself was fished out of the ocean by the Japanese, who took the wrecked bomber back to Japan and put it on display as a trophy; however, it disappeared some time between 1942-1945, with the most accepted theory being that it was broken up for scrap metal in the face of Japan's increasingly desperate war effort.[[/note]] with only one landing successfully in Siberia[[note]] Due to the complicated nature of Stalin's alliance with the US against Germany and His nonaggression pact with Japan, the plane and crew were interned for several months. They offered to take their B-25 west and fly with the Red Air Force against the Nazis until such time as they could be repatriated, but this was refused. The crew eventually escaped and paid a smuggler to drive them over the Chinese border, where they found friendly KMT forces who sent them home[[/note]].

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* In the Climax of ''Film/IronMan2'', Tony plots a short but tight course through the globe at the Stark Expo to shake some of the Hammeroids on his tail. It works.

** The mission requires two teams of pilots [[spoiler: making a high-speed flight at a very low altitude to get through a treacherous canyon in just two minutes (on the mission itself, there are even bridges in the canyon, forcing the pilots to fly ''sideways'' to fit through the gaps between the pillars), then make a sudden pull up to just barely avoid a mountain but not too high to trigger the SAM sites that cover the entire airspace above the canyon, meaning instant death to anyone who flies too high. They cannot fly too slow, either, as it will allow the enemy’s fifth-generation fighters that far outclass their F/A-18s to catch up to them and shoot them down like fish in a barrel.]]

* ''Series/{{JAG}}'': In the PilotMovie, Captain Boone, flies a night-time reconnaissance mission in an F-14 Tomcat twice at a very low altitude over Bosnia. On the second run, he’s hit by AA fire, but backseat rider Harm (who has night-blindness and hasn't flown a Tomcat in five years) manages to land it sound and safe on the carrier.

* ''VideoGame/JanesUSAF'': The final mission of the Red Arrow campaign is a particularly difficult one. You have to strike a nuclear reactor, but you cannot bomb it due to the reactor being operational and thereby capable of spreading radioactive fallout if its shell is destroyed. You must carry out a pinpoint strike on its control center and nothing else. Bombing the control center will only cause splash damage to the reactor itself. This takes precision guided bombs out of the equation. Missiles such as the AGM-65 Maverick cannot be used because the enemy has very sophisticated electronic countermeasures deployed at the reactor site, that will spoof and jam any guided missile. Your only option is to use your nose mounted 20 millimeter Vulcan cannon. But you can’t attack from any direction because the control center is located in front of two very large chimneys that must not be hit. You must fly at the control center head on and pull up at the right moment to avoid crashing into the chimneys. And just to screw with you further, there is a ZSU-23 “Shilka” anti-aircraft gun right in front of the control center, just waiting for you to try your attack run. Only some very precise flying and shooting will allow you to pull this off.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave Operation Tidal Wave]] a low-level strike against the Ploiești oil refineries conducted by 178 B-24 Liberator heavy bombers of the US Army Air Forces. These facilities supplied Germany with 1/2 of her petroleum products, and taking them out was widely regarded as the most critical element of the USAAF’s “Oil Plan” targeting all natural and synthetic oil production facilities including the wells at Balaton (west Hungary) and Auschwitz-III/Monowitz plant (Upper Silesia). Ploesti was believed to be the Third Reich’s AchillesHeel, and the bomber crews were all warned in advance that as long as the target was destroyed, it would be considered worthwhile even [[HeroicSacrifice if every plane was lost and every man was killed]]. The attack force was assembled in Libya, where a full-scale mock-up of Ploesti was assembled in the Sahara Desert for practice runs, as the mission required careful choreography and split-second timing to hit the target area from multiple directions at treetop level (well below the minimum safe altitude to drop bombs, requiring the ordnance to have time-delay fuses), overwhelming its defenses while also preventing any American planes from being hit by the blast of bombs already dropped. Originally called Operation Soapsuds, it was renamed Tidal Wave at the recommendation of UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill. To avoid tipping off the Germans as to Ploesti’s vulnerability, Allied commanders chose to stop all reconnaissance flights over the area. Unfortunately, this meant they weren’t aware of a failed Soviet raid that prompted the ''Luftwaffe'' and the Romanian military to heavily augment the defenses. [[FinaglesLaw Things immediately started going wrong once the mission got started]], resulting in a whole heap of DisasterDominoes that ended up killing the mission. One bomber crashed on takeoff, one of the lead planes (''Wong Wongo'', flown by 1st Lt. Brian Flavelle) crashed into the Mediterranean due to unknown reasons; the backup lead plane, piloted by the Flavelle's childhood friend, left the formation to search over ''Wong Wongo's'' crash site and was unable to catch up again, forcing him to abort and the third in command, 1st Lt. John Palm’s ''Brewery Wagon'', to take the lead. Eleven more had to abort due to fuel problems, the bombers got separated because [[WeAreStrugglingTogether two Group commanders couldn’t agree on engine settings]], and mission commander Brigadier General Uzal Ent made a critical navigational error, turning at the wrong checkpoint and leading half of the formation off course. Only one formation, led by ''Brewery Wagon,'' attacked as planned, but it was shot down in flames with no survivors as they made their bomb run. The carefully-planned timing went completely to hell, and the attacking bombers faced not only much heavier opposition than anticipated but also friendly bombs exploding in their faces and many near-collisions with other [=B-24s=]. The incredibly low altitude resulted in the bombers' gunners trading fire with anti-aircraft batteries at point-blank range and pilots having to maneuver over and around smokestacks, trees, and even fence lines and haystacks. 53 American bombers were lost[[note]] ''Jose Carioca'', a B-24 of the 93rd Bombardment Group, was shot down by a Romanian fighter over the city’s outskirts, spun out of control, crashed on a street, and slid several blocks before exploding in the Ploesti Women’s Prison, killing the bomber’s crew and nearly 100 civilians on the ground[[/note]], and 55 more came back with serious damage and casualties aboard[[note]] One B-24 had 365 distinct holes shot in it[[/note]]. 440 men (average age 19) were killed[[note]]One Romanian farmer grabbed his rifle when a B-24 crashed into the field outside his house. He found nine of the ten Americans aboard dead, while an 18-year-old gunner was still barely conscious despite having been [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe torn in half at the waist]]. The farmer [[MercyKill shot him in the head to ease his agony]][[/note]] and 220 more captured or missing. Five men received the Medal of Honor, more than any other single operation in history, three of them posthumous[[note]] Lt. Col. Addison Baker, commander of the 93rd Bombardment Group (Heavy), and his co-pilot, Maj. John Jerstad, posthumously received theirs for maintaining their Group Lead position after heavy damage to their B-24, ''Hell’s Wench'', forced them to jettison their bombs before reaching their target—the Columbia Aquila refinery—, then staying at the controls and trying to gain altitude to allow their crew to bail out. 2nd Lt. Lloyd Herbert Hughes of the 398th BG(H) posthumously received his for staying on his bomb run ''while burning alive'' after his plane, ''Ole Kickapoo'' was badly damaged by ground fire, then set afire by the explosion of a bomb from another B-24. Hughes’s bomber crashed moments after dropping their bombs on the Steaua Romana refinery, killing Hughes and four of his crew and mortally wounding four more, leaving two others miraculously uninjured. Col. John “Killer” Kane, commander of the 98th Bombardment Group, and Col. Leon Johnson, commander of the 44th, were the only surviving recipients, leading their respective groups through hellish fire to hit the Astra Romana and Columbia Aquila complexes[[/note]]. The refineries were damaged, but not critically, as most of them were operating below capacity anyway, and in fact, within a month, [[SenselessSacrifice most of them were producing considerably more fuel and lubricants than they had the day before the attack]]. Ultimately the Ploesti refineries only stopped supplying the Germans in the aftermath of Malinovsky and Tobulkhin's ''Jassy–Kishinev'' Offensive of August 1944, during which Soviet troops secured the facilities as Romania switched sides.[[note]]Several historians will, however, point out that while the primary manufacturing capabilities of the Ploesti refineries were unaffected, there was significant damage to the ''auxiliary'' systems and reserve storage tanks, which was not repaired by 1945. There is some speculation that this damage meant that, while the refinery never lost its mainline production, the lack of these secondary and auxiliary storage would come to bite Germany in the ass later in the war, when such reserves would have been vital to the war effort.[[/note]]
* Several major airstrikes by USAAF B-17s against targets in central and southern Germany without friendly fighter escorts. The first Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid, for instance, cost 60 bombers shot down, another 60 damaged beyond repair, and over 1,000 casualties, without doing enough damage to the target (a ball-bearing manufacturing plant). Missions against Stuttgart and Bremen had a similar butcher’s bill for equally-disappointing results. In the face of unsustainable losses, the 8th Air Force had to limit its bombing missions to occupied France and the Low Countries where Allied fighters could protect the heavies in the fall of 1943 until the long-range P-51 Mustang became available.

* During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, one of the earliest Allied victories in the Pacific was the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid Doolittle Raid]], named for the commander, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle. To pull the raid off, they had to modify a group of twin-engined B-25 Mitchell bombers to launch from an aircraft carrier that was ''barely'' long enough to actually get land-based planes airborne,[[note]]Though, really, the B-25 was the most-suited plane for this operation at the time, since it had an impressively low takeoff speed of only 60-80 mph. [[/note]] all so they could drop a few firebombs on Japanese cities and make the Japanese think they were at greater risk of attack than they actually were.[[note]]Unimpressive as it sounds, this actually had a drastic effect on Japan's public morale and military doctrine; despite lampooning it as the "Do-Nothing Raid" in propaganda broadcasts, the attack all but shattered the idea that the Japanese home islands were protected from direct enemy attack, a prospect that had held up for ''centuries'' at least. It also prompted the IJN and IJA to begin new campaigns with the goal of destroying or taking any and all airbases that held even the ''remote'' chance of housing strategic bombers within striking distance of the home islands, since they were not aware that the planes had come from a carrier (not that the idea of B-25's coming off a carrier was particularly believable anyway), and these campaigns would eventually result in the decisive Battle of Midway in 1942.[[/note]] Most of the planes [[OneWayTrip ended up ditching in China or crashing in the sea]],[[note]]One such plane, the ''Ruptured Duck'', was flown by Lt. Ted Lawson, who would go on to write about his part in the raid and subsequent escape back to friendly lines in his novel ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'', which would later be adapted into a [[Film/ThirtySecondsOverTokyo film of the same name]]. For its part, the ''Ruptured Duck'' crashed offshore of the Chinese mainland as Lawson attempted to land it on a beach, hoping to land it intact while his crew got their bearings and located the nearest friendly airfield to fly to, but a misjudgment in distance caused it to come down in the water instead, and the crew hastily abandoned the plane as it sank. ''Ruptured Duck'' itself was fished out of the ocean by the Japanese, who took the wrecked bomber back to Japan and put it on display as a trophy; however, it disappeared some time between 1942-1945, with the most accepted theory being that it was broken up for scrap metal in the face of Japan's increasingly desperate war effort.[[/note]] with only one landing successfully in Siberia[[note]] Due to the complicated nature of Stalin’s alliance with the US against Germany and His nonaggression pact with Japan, the plane and crew were interned for several months. They offered to take their B-25 west and fly with the Red Air Force against the Nazis until such time as they could be repatriated, but this was refused. The crew eventually escaped and paid a smuggler to drive them over the Chinese border, where they found friendly KMT forces who sent them home[[/note]].

** The first team pilots [[spoiler:must take out a tiny bunker above the uranium stockpile to allow the second team pilots to take out the stockpile itself with two consecutive precision bombings (something that Maverick calls "two consecutive miracles.").]]
** ''Then'', [[spoiler:they have to pull an extremely steep climb to clear the even higher mountain in their way, which subjects the pilots to over 9.5 G-force acceleration that could black them out mid-flight.]]

* In ''Film/TopGunMaverick'', The mission to [[spoiler: take down an enemy uranium refinery in an unidentified rogue country]] is definitely one of these, it is nigh impossible (pun intended) to the point that even TOPGUN graduates - already among the most exceptional pilots in the world who are selected to do this mission specifically because of it - have very low chances to survive. Hangman even notes that even [[AcePilot Maverick]] himself (or any pilot in history, for that matter) has never been through this kind of mission before.
** The mission requires two teams of pilots [[spoiler: making a high-speed flight at a very low altitude to get through a treacherous canyon in just two minutes (on the real mission, there are even bridges in the canyon, forcing the pilots to fly ''sideways'' to fit through the gaps between the pillars), then make a sudden pull up to just barely avoid a mountain but not too high to trigger the SAM sites that covered the entire airspace above the canyon, meaning instant death to anyone who flies too high. They cannot fly too slow, either, as it will allow the enemy fifth-generation fighters that far outclassed their F/A-18s to catch up to them and will shoot them down like fish in a barrel.]]

** Finally, if they somehow managed to survive ''all of that'', [[spoiler:they're immediately bombarded by anti-air missiles fired from SAM sites in all directions and pursued by any airborne enemy fifth-gen fighters on their way back home.]] Needless to say, it was a mission in which casualties are almost a certainty, and Maverick's main goal is to train his students hard enough to overcome these insane odds and get everyone back alive.

* The Fairey Swordfish also saw action against the ''Bismarck'', The Kreigsmarine's most heavily-armed and heavily-armoured battleship. The most notable sortie was a last, desperate gamble; with night coming on fast, and with ''Bismarck'' expected to be in range of German air cover by morning, the crews had to press their luck to the extreme. One Swordfish took an estimated ''175 hits'' from flak shrapnel, but stayed in the air. One pilot, ready to release his torpedo, was told to wait by his navigator - who was hanging upside down out of the cockpit, gauging the waves for the best time to release. When they did, the ''Bismarck'' turned sharply, took the hit at the stern, but sailed on. Dispirited at their failure, the crews returned... only to be told that the ''Bismarck'' was behaving erratically. She had not recovered from her evasive turn and had ended up going North-West, ''away'' from the safety of the French coast and Luftwaffe air cover. They had succeeded in damaging her steering, buying vital time for Admiral Tovey's fleet of battleships to close the distance, choose their moment, engage with, and ultimately sink the ''Bismarck''[[note]]... taking 50 minutes of near-continuous fire from two battleships and two heavy cruisers, which expended over 2,800 shells before the engagement was finally over[[/note]].

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEEDDestiny'': One episode features Shinn flying through a cave in the separated parts of his [[CombiningMecha Impulse Gundam]] in order to avoid Earth Alliance defenses protecting a WaveMotionGun built into a mountain, and then reassemble it once he reaches the gun itself.

* ''Manga/Area88'': All adaptations except the video game include the early mission where the base pilots have to fly through a narrow, winding canyon to evade radar and [=SAMs=] en route to an enemy base. (During the mission briefing, the base commander overlays cross-sections of the three narrowest sections of the canyon to prove that there's barely enough space for a fighter to fly through.) A few of them don't make it through the canyon; even more pilots fall to the obstacle the enemy had waiting at the end, and the protagonist only survives because of an obscure factoid about the jet he was piloting. ([[spoiler: [[AluminumChristmasTrees The F-8 Crusader can fly while its wings are folded for carrier transport]].]])

* ''Film/TheDamBusters'', based on a RealLife example. To collapse a concrete dam requires a very large amount of explosive force to be delivered within a very concentrated area at the base, and that would require more precision than the RAF could achieve by simply having a Lancaster or Halifax fly overhead and dropping a 'stick' of conventional bombs. Dive bombers couldn't carry a big enough payload or sufficient fuel to reach the target dams in Germany, and modifying a light bomber to drop torpedoes was out because the Nazis had thought of that and strung netting across the width of the reservoirs. The solution was to design a bomb that could be skipped across the surface of the reservoir before sinking to the bottom, causing a "water hammer" effect when they detonated, and so a legend was born.

* ''Film/MemphisBelle'', the first B-17 crew to achieve twenty-five missions in the European theatre in WWII. Because of the propaganda needs, the crew hopes for a milk run (a propaganda drop in occupied France). Nope. They're bombing a factory (wedged between a hospital and an orphanage, of course) deep in Germany.
* ''Film/DownPeriscope'', A newly appointed submarine commander must take a renovated UsefulNotes/KoreanWar-era diesel submarine and evade the American Navy's detection to shoot mock targets in Charleston and Norfolk during a war game exercise. If that weren't hard enough, an admiral is determined to see him fail through any means necessary. Interestingly, the crew that Admiral Graham handpicks for Dodge (because he considers them unworthy of ''his'' navy) ends up being [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits exactly what Dodge needs to win]] (except, maybe, Lake, as Dodge is actually just as good a diver as her but felt sorry for her). The most direct example comes at the climax when Dodge and crew steer the sub right between the twin propellers of a cargo ship to sneak through the Admiral's blockade.
* The climactic battle in ''Film/IronEagle II'' requires the pilots to hit a terrorist base located inside the side of a mountain. It had a decidedly [[Film/ANewHope Death-Star-attack-esque]] feel to it.
* In the Climax of ''Film/IronMan2'', Tony plots a short but tight course through the globe at the Stark Expo to shake some of the Hammeroids on his tail. It works.
* ''Film/FlightOfTheIntruder'' features a scene where two characters infiltrate Hanoi under heavy antiaircraft fire in an attempt to destroy a missile depot. Since their bombs don't drop on the first pass, they have to do the whole thing over again.
* ''Film/DasBoot'': A Nazi German submarine is told to redeploy to the Mediterranean, which means sneaking through the narrow Gibraltar sound, which at the time was swarming with warships and planes. [[spoiler:[[FromBadToWorse It gets worse]]: since the crewmen are unaware of British radar innovations, they are detected and bombed ''outside the strait'', before they can even submerge and properly begin their approach.]]
* During the attack on [[spoiler:Iscandar]] in ''Film/SpaceBattleshipYamato'', ''Yamato'' dives into the atmosphere while launching fighters in a very ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003''-like fashion, complete with jumping out before she hits the ground. The fighters proceed to fly through a cave system.
* At the beginning of ''Film/TheGunsOfNavarone'', we see the debrief of the survivors of a failed mission to bomb an artillery position in a cave dug into the side of a cliff. They categorically refuse to try it again, so command has to send in a ground mission to spike the guns, which the main characters of the movie get chosen to do.

* This is a recurring element in Creator/DaleBrown's books. One of the best examples is ''Flight of the Old Dog'', where the eponymous bomber has to fly deep into well-defended Soviet airspace to destroy a superweapon.

* In ''Nimitz-Class'', the investigators on the case of the surprise nuclear strike against a carrier group determine how a rogue submarine could have made the attack by taking an identical model submarine and maneuvering it through the Bosporus Strait, proving their theory that the attacker traveled from the Black Sea to make the attack. Until they complete their test, nobody believes that it's even possible for a submarine to traverse the strait without being detected.

* ''Series/{{Airwolf}}'': Stringfellow Hawke never had to perform one of these directly; the closest he came was in "Proof Through the Night", where String and Dom had to fly a weaponless Airwolf deep into the USSR to retrieve a defector and his family. However, Airwolf's ''creator'' (one Dr. Charles Henry Moffet) performs one in the pilot episode ''Shadow of the Hawke''. (Granted, it was only supposed to be a demonstration of Airwolf's capabilities... but Dr. Moffet had other ideas.)

* In one episode of ''Series/CaptainPowerAndTheSoldiersOfTheFuture'', Pilot has to fly the main ship down an entrenchment leading to the control center for Lord Dread's [[KillSat Icarus Platform]] while Power, Tank, and Scout assist her against the trench defenses on their skybikes. Pilot's job is to blow the doors of the control center using a proton missile so that Power and crew can get inside and blow the platform before it can be used to digitize a whole lot of people.
* ''Series/{{JAG}}'': In the PilotMovie, Captain Boone, flies a night-time reconnaissance mission in an F-14 Tomcat twice at a very low altitude over Bosnia. On the second run, he’s hit by AA fire, but backseat rider Harm (who has night-blindness and hasn't flown a Tomcat in five years) manages to land it sound and safe on the carrier.
* The ''Series/{{Nova}}'' episode [[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/bombing-hitler-dams.html "Bombing Hitler's Dams"]] profiles Operation Chastise (see RealLife, below) at the same time as it follows a real-life team trying to recreate the raid in British Columbia. Of course, dropping actual explosives from civilian aircraft is illegal, so they dropped a dummy bomb and then blew the dam up remotely after hitting it.

* ''VideoGame/WarThunder'' offers a couple maps in which the enemy has a naval task force hidden in a fjord. The targets are entirely optional, but if a player is going for the big payoff by taking out a surface ship, he'll need to fly down the fjord in a bomber, dodging flak from ships and shore, and praying that the enemy fighters stay distracted long enough for him to drop his bombs or torpedo.
* ''VideoGame/CrimsonSkies: High Road to Revenge'' involves flying through ''two'' zeppelin-eating grinder machines to take out their power cells, before diving ''into a giant rotor'' to blow up more of them. In order to prevent it from using its weather control weapon from leveling Chicago. Hey, RuleOfCool.
* In ''VideoGame/StarFox'', several missions could be considered this.
** The mission "The Space Armada" in the original SNES game has you flying through a battleship's interior in order to destroy its core. Fortunately, most of Andross' battleships are [[BenevolentArchitecture hollow tubes]] that lead straight from the front of the ship to their [[AttackItsWeakPoint power cores]] with a convenient exit out the back, and [[BossBattle the one that isn't designed like this]] puts you on auto-pilot for the sections that would be [[CutscenePowerToTheMax too tricky to handle in regular gameplay.]]
** The "Venom Core" missions have you flying through the conduit leading to Andross' inner chambers. The "Venom Surface" mission in the second route, additionally, pulls you through a very highway path with a roof and a wall to the right, so the only opening is to the left.
** ''VideoGame/StarFox64'''s penultimate boss fight on easy-mode Venom, where you chase a HumongousMecha enemy through an imposing stone structure of some kind as he flings obstacles in your path, comes to mind.
** ''VideoGame/StarFoxAssault'''s final mission has you flying into the core of the Aparoid home world, where the Aparoid Queen waits for you. The mission isn't actually all that difficult, however, given that it's a fairly wide tunnel and the enemies all approach from the front.
** Any mission on Solar, which has the team flying far too close to either a really hot gas giant or a fairly cold star.
* In ''VideoGame/RogueSquadron 2'', the last mission in the regular campaign is the attack on the Death Star in Film/ReturnOfTheJedi (above), it's not only Airstrike Impossible but adds components of an escort mission. Naturally, high-speed flight down winding tunnels, [[ZergRush mooks-a-licious]] and [[CollapsingLair getting out before]] it [[OutrunTheFireball all goes boom]] are all featured.
* ''Franchise/StarWars Episode I: Starfighter'', the ''training mission'' falls into the trench category of Airstrike Impossible, thanks to an [[InvisibleWall invisible ceiling]] keeping the player inside a wing-scrapingly narrow canyon. The self-same canyon (complete with ceiling) is reprised in an escort mission filled with Trade Federation baddies. Interestingly, while ''tunnel fighting'' appears in the final level (attacking the Droid Control Ship, including getting inside around the same time Anakin did), side-tunnels actually provide time to hide and recharge shields, hence subverting the trope into a tactical advantage.
** The sequel, ''Jedi Starfighter'', has some more open-air missions among broken sea cliffs, and a few missions that involve flying inside of surprisingly small installations.
* ''VideoGame/XWing'' also has a finale involving an attack on the (first) Death Star, where the player is ''encouraged'' to fly down the trench (they get an arbitrary speed boost given only within the trench), but you can just as easily ignore the trench entirely and dive-bomb the target if you prefer.
* ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheArcadeGame'''s trench run, which now has barriers blocking your way to the exhaust port, making that part more reminiscent of the Death Star reactor core shaft run from ''[=RotJ=]''.
* The final assault on the Death Star is reenacted in ''[[VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefront2015 Star Wars Battlefront]]'''s "Battle Station" mode, where the Rebels can only win if one of three randomly assigned players can pass a series of ten checkpoints throughout the Death Star trench that ends in front of the ship's exhaust port, where they must make the final shot to destroy the space station. All this goes on while the enemy team is fully aware of who's been assigned to make the run and equipped with just as much firepower as your entire team.
* ''VideoGame/SecretWeaponsOverNormandy'', at least in the dambusting mission, which is of reasonable difficulty. Later missions tread a jot into Airstrike Impossible territory, though.
* ''Strike Gunner'', the final level one-ups the typical Shmup by including dead ends. Thank god the rest of the game is kinda easy, but still, it's hell if the final two bosses managed to clip a few lives from you. The final trench run has killed more than its share of one credit runs.
* ''VideoGame/AirForceDelta'', as Konami's answer to Ace Combat, of course has to attempt to one-up it at every opportunity, but the original takes the cake by being an homage to UN Squadron of all things. A cavern, strewn with girders, with the target on the ''ceiling''.
** ''Air Force Delta Strike'' {{exaggerate|dTrope}}s this with one of these about every other mission, including several canyon-runs, an ''entire mission'' taking place in a subway tunnel, an attack run down a giant railgun barrel ''three times'' in one mission, diving into tornado funnel clouds... you get the idea
* ''Tom Clancy's VideoGame/{{HAWX}}'' had an entire level based around three such airstrikes, though playing with it in that your obstacle isn't a canyon or flying through some other solid object, but an intense field of automated anti-aircraft fire that just happens to have some blind spots which can be exploited through ERS. If you deviate from the course the game sets you up with at all, you'll be targeted by a buttload of SAM batteries and most likely killed. There's also a variation on ''Ace Combat''[='=]s typical altitude-limited missions in another level, where the altitude limit is imposed by fancy {{EMP}} defenses covering a limited area, which goes away once you destroy the source of the EMP field in that area.
** The sequel had a slightly more classic example in its last mission: after shooting down nukes while dodging {{Slow Laser}}s from a KillSat, you deliver the last blow to the enemy stronghold by flying into the bunker through a narrow tunnel and detonating a bomb inside of it.

* ''BlueLightning'' has a mission where you fly through a set of narrow canyons to take out enemy bases, complete with an [[InvisibleWall invisible ceiling]] keeping you near ground level.
* ''VideoGame/WingCommander III'', The final mission was supposed to be this, with staying in the canyons on the way to the fault target to avoid attracting the attention of infinitely respawning Ekapshii, but a glitch in the transition from the space leg of the mission to the atmosphere leg allowed the "one time" cloak to be used again, making it trivially easy to get there, by cloaking and flying above the mountains in a straight line.
* In the video game adaptation of ''Airwolf'', the ''whole game'' was like this.
* While it is a side-scrolling shump, the ''VideoGame/{{Area 88}}'' game (UN Squadron in the United States) has the player fly into canyons and caves for a few missions.
* The suicide mission to Ilos in ''VideoGame/{{Mass Effect|1}}'' has a particularly spectacular version. Joker, an AcePilot that came across as arrogant the entire game (he straight up says he is the best human pilot, period) proves his skill here. Flying a frigate in a near-vertical dive, straight at a small clearing of 20 meters (one-fifth of the minimum for such a drop), pulling up at the last second to fling the Mako--with your commando team inside--straight at TheDragon. The blast doors close, and the Mako pulls to a stop...five feet from the doors. To put this in perspective, Saren was always one step ahead of you, mocking you each time, and at this moment, he has a brief OhCrap moment at seeing a combat drop flung at him from nowhere.
* The Suicide Mission in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' is mostly a commando operation, but Joker's insertion operation has shades of this while engaging in a dogfight with enemy constructs a fiftieth the size of the Normandy in a field full of the debris of every spacecraft that has tried to make it through the Omega-4 Relay in the entirety of galactic history and blowing up a cruiser-sized vessel [[spoiler:(the same one that destroyed the original Normandy)]] equipped by the Reapers with a scout frigate.
* The FMVGame ''VideoGame/SewerShark'' is based entirely around this premise.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Scramble}}'', the player had to do this after getting through the enemy base and navigating a maze of DeadlyWalls.
* ''Star Strike'' for the UsefulNotes/{{Intellivision}} and UsefulNotes/{{Atari 2600}} had the player flying down a Death Star-like trench to bomb five missiles poised to [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroy Earth]].

* ''F/A-18 Hornet'' has a few missions like this. One of the final missions, "Pull the Plug", has you fly through a river valley to avoid bombardment by SAM's, then [[NukeEm take out a dam with a nuke]]. In one of the ExpansionPack missions, "Neighbors", you have to bomb a nuclear missile launch silo at very low altitude, which [[ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics detonates the warheads as well]].
* ''VideoGame/BattlePirates'' recently introduced a set of single-player campaigns, the first four of which introduce the player to certain basic tactics. One of these focuses on the use of fast ships and short-range weapons to exploit the minimum firing range of certain long-range defensive turrets; appropriately enough, this campaign is called "Run The Trench".
* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration'' used the submarine version, with the ''Hagane'' trying to bypass the Divine Crusaders' aerial fleets by traveling underwater past its normal depth tolerances, fighting against a pack of enemy submarines the whole way.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' offers a rare civilian example in the knife flight challenges, half of which must be done as part of the HundredPercentCompletion package. Although the game world (and downtown Los Santos in particular) offers countless opportunities for knife flights between tall buildings, only a select few of them actually count. One of the most difficult examples involves flying through a gap between two buildings that's barely wider than the smallest stunt plane in the game is high (and stunt planes are not only the smallest of all available planes but also the only ones manoeuverable enough to have a chance in hell to pull this off). Factor in the game's random gusts of wind while flying aircraft, plus the fact that the slightest collision with anything will see your plane go down in flames, and you have yourself one of the most frustrating challenges in the whole game.
* ''VideoGame/GhostReconWildlands'' contains dozens of supply raid side missions where your Ghosts can steal an aircraft (bush plane or Blackhawk helicopter) loaded with enemy supplies and deliver it to the nearest rebel airstrip. Some of these airstrips are ''far'' away, with the most direct route being dotted with [[SuperPersistentMissile impossible-to-evade]] [[OneHitKill SAM batteries]], which often forces you to fly extremely low above ground (<5-10 meters) or through canyons if even that's not enough. It's not helped by these SAM batteries being virtually impossible to spot from the air until their detection meter starts filling up, and by then it's usually too late to salvage the mission, turning some of these tasks into extended exercises in trial-and-error to find a viable path through the AA network.
** Special mention goes to the first mission of Operation Silent Spade, which sees you and your team steal a helicopter filled with uranium ore. Not only is flying through a canyon to avoid SAM batteries actually scripted into the mission, at a certain point attack helicopters will spawn which need to be evaded and/or shot down.

** The point is that the runway could not be used by Argentinian fighters like the various versions of the Mirage III/IAI Dagger that the ''Fuerza Aerea Argentina'' used. Smaller combat aircraft and transports could still operate, but not the fast jets; they had to operate from the mainland, which seriously reduced their combat endurance and possibly warload. For this reason, Black Buck 1 is considered by some comentators to have been a strategic success.

* When Argentina landed forces on the British-controlled Falkland Islands in 1982, the nearest British ships were weeks away; plenty of time for the Argentine forces to dig in on the Falkland Islands. Even with in-air refueling, the distance from the nearest British airfield to the Falklands exceeded the maximum operational range of the best British bomber aircraft several times over. But there's nothing stopping you from refueling the tanker aircraft in-air... or refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the tanker aircraft in air... or refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the... you get the picture. The end result was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck Operation Black Buck]], launching a fleet of ''eleven'' 'Victor' tanker aircraft and a single 'Vulcan' bomber from Ascension Island (off the western coast of Africa). The Victors refuelled the Vulcan, and each other, repeatedly during the ''sixteen-hour'' journey to the Falkland Islands and back again. The primary 'Victor', which had three pilots in the two-man cockpit, was refueled four times on the approach and once more on the return. It held the record for the longest-distance bombing run until ''1991''. Oh, and they did it again - flying a total of ''five'' 12,200km sorties, out of seven attempts (the other two were cancelled due to weather or equipment problems). While considered effective in both psychological-warfare and propaganda terms, the actual effectiveness versus Argentinian readiness is still debated - for instance, the Port Stanely Airport runway was successfully hit by Black Buck 1, but while the damage proved difficult to repair, aircraft were still able to operate from the shortened runway.

* The Fairey Swordfish also saw action against the ''Bismarck'', The Kreigsmarine's most heavily-armed and heavily-armoured battleship. The most notable sortie was a last, desperate gamble; with night coming on fast, and with ''Bismarck'' expected to be in range of German air cover by morning, the crews had to press their luck to the extreme. One Swordfish took an estimated ''175 hits'' from flak shrapnel, but stayed in the air. One pilot, ready to release his torpedo, was told to wait by his navigator - who was hanging upside down out of the cockpit, gauging the waves for the best time to release. When they did, the ''Bismarck'' turned sharply, took the hit at the stern, but sailed on. Dispirited at their failure, the crews returned... only to be told that the ''Bismarck'' was behaving erratically. She had not recovered from her evasive turn and had ended up going North-West, ''away'' from the safety of the French coast and Luftwaffe air cover. They had succeeded in damaging her steering, buying vital time for Admiral Tovey's fleet of battleships to close the distance, choose their moment, engage with, and ultimately sink the ''Bismarck''[[note]]... taking 50 minutes of near-continuous fire from four battleships, which expended over 2,800 shells before the engagement was finally over[[/note]].

** Also a bit of a subversion: Pearl Harbor was thought too shallow for torpedoes, despite the existence of such torpedoes in the hands of the British.

Since ''Film/TheDamBusters'', or rather, ''Film/ANewHope'''s homage to ''633 Squadron'' for the fight against the [[ThatsNoMoon Death Star]], there has been in increasing chance such missions will require flying though a canyon, shaft, city, or other form of trench or absurdly long and spacious corridor to reach the target.

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEEDDestiny'': One episode features Shinn flying though a cave in the separated parts of his [[CombiningMecha Impulse Gundam]] in order to avoid Earth Alliance defenses protecting a WaveMotionGun built into a mountain, and then reassemble it once he reaches the gun itself.

** In ''Anime/MacrossDoYouRememberLove'', after the allied Zentradi forces and the Macross itself have punched into [[BigBad Boddol Zer]]'s moon-sized fortress, [[AcePilot Hikaru Ichijo]] flies his [[TransformingMecha VF-1 Valkyrie]], alone and armed to the teeth, into the very heart of the installation. He must weave through {{Laser Hallway}}s, twisting corridors, and [[BeamSpam impossibly thick laser barrages]] -- all [[ThemeMusicPowerUp set to]] the movie's {{tit|leDrop}}ular song -- until reaching Boddol Zer himself... and blasting him to atoms point blank.
** ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'' has a homage to the above-mentioned sequence at the climax where Alto must [[spoiler:destroy the [[HiveQueen Vajra Queen]]'s head, and [[BigBad Grace]] along with it]], but first he has to blast his way across the surface of an orbital ring structure and survive the onslaught of the Vajra and the [[spoiler:Galaxy Fleet]]'s assault carriers.

** ''Sink da Grimlug'' involves an airstrike against a gigantic ship equipped with anti air weapons. The orks end up landing (crashing) onto it and just igniting the ship's ammo supplies after it becomes clear they can't destroy it via airstrike.

*** Finally, the Resistance soldiers have to try and destroy the First Order's Battering Ram Cannon with a small force of old speeders. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome reality ensues]] , as they can't break through the screening force's defenses with such meager equipment and they are forced to break off without success.]]

* ''Film/DownPeriscope'', A newly appointed submarine commander must take a renovated UsefulNotes/KoreanWar-era diesel submarine and evade the American Navy's detection to shoot mock targets in Charleston and Norfolk during a war game exercise. If that weren't hard enough, an admiral is determined to see him fail through any means necessary. Interestingly, the crew that Admiral Graham handpicks for Dodge (because he considers them unworthy of ''his'' navy) ends up being [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits exactly what Dodge needs to win]] (except, maybe, Lake, as Dodge is actually just as good a diver as her but felt sorry for her). The most direct example comes at the climax, when Dodge and crew steer the sub right between the twin propellers of a cargo ship to sneak through the Admiral's blockade.

* In ''Nimitz-Class'', the investigators on the case of the surprise nuclear strike against an carrier group determine how a rogue submarine could have made the attack by taking an identical model submarine and maneuvering it through the Bosporus Strait, proving their theory that the attacker traveled from the Black Sea to make the attack. Until they complete their test, nobody believes that it's even possible for a submarine to traverse the strait without being detected.

* ''Series/{{Airwolf}}'': Stringfellow Hawke never had to perform one of these directly; the closest he came was in "Proof through the Night", where String and Dom had to fly a weaponless Airwolf deep into the USSR to retrieve a defector and his family. However, Airwolf's ''creator'' (one Dr. Charles Henry Moffet) performs one in the pilot episode ''Shadow of the Hawke''. (Granted, it was only supposed to be a demonstration of Airwolf's capabilities... but Dr. Moffet had other ideas.)

* In one episode of ''Series/CaptainPowerAndTheSoldiersOfTheFuture'', Pilot has to fly the main ship down an entrenchment leading to the control center for Lord Dread's [[KillSat Icarus Platform]] while Power, Tank and Scout assist her against the trench defenses on their skybikes. Pilot's job is to blow the doors of the control center using a proton missile so that Power and crew can get inside and blow the platform before it can be used to digitize a whole lot of people.
* ''Series/{{JAG}}'': In the PilotMovie, Captain Boone, flies a night-time reconnaissance mission in an F-14 Tomcat twice on very low altitude over Bosnia. On the second run he’s hit by AA fire, but backseat rider Harm (who has night-blindness and hasn't flown a Tomcat in five years) manages to land it sound and safe on the carrier.
* The ''Series/{{Nova}}'' episode [[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/bombing-hitler-dams.html "Bombing Hitler's Dams"]] profiles Operation Chastise (see RealLife, below) at the same time as it follows a real life team trying to recreate the raid in British Columbia. Of course, dropping actual explosives from civilian aircraft is illegal, so they dropped a dummy bomb and then blew the dam up remotely after hitting it.

* ''VideoGame/EagleOneHarrierAttack'', another game in the vein of ''Ace Combat'' has a small one at the very end of the campaign,[[spoiler:where a nuke is disposed of by precise hovering down and and up a mine shaft.]]

** Several more mods have gone this route: the [[VideoGame/DimensionalEclipse Star Fortress]] ''Amaterasu'' and the [[VideoGame/WingsOfDawn Hertak Flagship]] both have hollow areas on the interior that a pilot can exploit to blow up their weakpoints. There have also been several hollow asteroid models for use as installations.

* The suicide mission to Ilos in ''VideoGame/{{Mass Effect|1}}'' has a particularly spectacular version. Joker, an AcePilot that came across as arrogant the entire game (he straight up says he is the best human pilot, period) proves his skill here. Flying a frigate in a near vertical dive, straight at a small clearing of 20 meters (one-fifth of the minimum for such a drop), pulling up at the last second to fling the Mako--with your commando team inside--straight at TheDragon. The blast doors close, and the Mako pulls to a stop...five feet from the doors. To put this in perspective, Saren was always one step ahead of you, mocking you each time, and at this moment, he has a brief OhCrap moment at seeing a combat drop flung at him from nowhere.

* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration'' used the submarine version, with the ''Hagane'' trying to bypass the Divine Crusaders' aerial fleets by traveling underwater past it's normal depth tolerances, fighting against a pack of enemy submarines the whole way.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' offers a rare civilian example in the knife flight challenges, half of which must be done as part of the HundredPercentCompletion package. Although the game world (and downtown Los Santos in particular) offers countless opportunities for knife flights between tall buildings, only a select few of them actually count. One of the most difficult examples involves flying through a gap between two buildings that's barely wider than the smallest stunt plane in the game is high (and stunt planes are not only the smallest of all available planes, but also the only ones manoeuvrable enough to have a chance in hell to pull this off). Factor in the game's random gusts of wind while flying aircraft, plus the fact that the slightest collision with anything will see your plane go down in flames, and you have yourself one of the most frustrating challenges in the whole game.

* In ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefrontII2017'', most Starfighter Assault maps feature objectives that requires the attacking side to fly in tight airspace to shoot them down.

** Unrelated to Starfighter Assault; in the final mission of the ''Resurrection'' DLC campaign, [[spoiler:Iden, Shriv and Zay try to infiltrate a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer in stolen TIE Fighters, but with no way to get in without blowing their cover, decide to engage in a dogfight with the surrounding squadrons, before settling for flying into the Star Destroyer's engine section. It's subverted, however, since the ship jumps into hyperspace as Inferno Squad enters its reactor, disabling the stolen TIE Fighters and leaving Iden and co. to continue the infiltration on foot]].

* The Soviet Baltic Fleet spent most of the Siege of Leningrad moored at the Kronstadt Island Naval Base or the Baltic Shipyards. Bombers trying to strike at either location had to run the densest concentration of AA fire ''in the world'' (Ploesti had more guns but over a larger area), yet they managed it on several occasions. Taking out the fleet's larger ships was key to Army Group North's hopes of taking the city by force in late 1941, as the fleet's naval artillery would made a direct attack on the city very costly. Their destruction was also key to General Erich von Manstein's plan for starving the city into submission in August 1942's ''Operation Nordlicht'', as they allowed the Soviets to deploy most of their artillery to the east of the city to defend the lifeline through Lake Ladoga which Manstein was hoping to cut [[note]] ''Nordlicht'' was foiled by the Soviets' July 1942 ''Sinyavino'' offensive to the east of the city [[/note]]. The Fleet's greatest and most-targeted asset was the ''Oktoberskaya Revolutsiya'' (formerly the ''Gangut'', lead ship of the Imperial Russian Navy's ''Gangut''- class battleships). She was actually ''partially sunk'' by a daring dive-bomber raid on the Baltic Shipyard, after being critically damaged at her moorings once before, but fortunately was refloated and restored to working condition in time to help drive the Germans out of the Baltic in mid-late 1944.

* The Fairey Swordfish also saw action against the ''Bismarck'', The Kreigsmarine's most heavily-armed and heavily-armoured battleship. The most notable sortie was a last, desperate gamble; with night coming on fast, and with ''Bismarck'' expected to be in range of German air cover by morning, the crews had to press their luck to the extreme. One Swordfish took an estimated ''175 hits'' from flak shrapnel, but stayed in the air. One pilot, ready to release his torpedo, was told to wait by his navigator - who was hanging upside down out of the cockpit, gauging the waves for the best time to release. When they did, the ''Bismarck'' turned sharply, took the hit at the stern, but sailed on. Dispirited at their failure, the crews returned... only to be told that the ''Bismarck'' was behaving erratically. She had not recovered from her evasive turn, and had ended up going North-West, ''away'' from the safety of the French coast and Lufwaffe air cover. They had succeeded in damaging her steering, buying vital time for Admiral Tovey's fleet of battleships to close the distance, choose their moment, engage with, and ultimately sink the ''Bismarck''[[note]]... taking 50 minutes of near-continuous fire from four battleships, which expended over 2,800 shells before the engagement was finally over[[/note]].
* The German battleship ''Tirpitz'', like her sister ship ''Bismarck'', had proven to be very difficult to sink, due in large part to the Germans harboring her in fjords which presented many natural protections against sea and air attack, in addition to the use of AntiAir defenses and torpedo nets. Even repeated raids using six-ton [[BigBulkyBomb Tallboy]] bombs had failed to do fatal damage, though one bomb had traveled through the ship before detonating in the seabed below, crippling the ship for a time. The third attempt to use Tallboys against ''Tirpitz'', ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Catechism Operation Catechism]]), involved dropping [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill twenty-nine]] Tallboys over the target. They scored two hits and one near miss, and several of the other misses destroyed the sandbank and torpedo nets which had been built up to help protect the ship. ''Tirpitz'' finally met her end with one last internal explosion (blowing one of the turrets off the ship) before she capsized in the fjord.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave Operation Tidal Wave]] a low-level strike against the Ploiești oil refineries conducted by 178 B-24 Liberator heavy bombers of the US Army Air Forces. These facilities supplied Germany with 1/2 of her petroleum products, and taking them out was widely regarded as the most critical element of the USAAF’s “Oil Plan” targeting all natural and synthetic oil production facilities including the wells at Balaton (west Hungary) and Auschwitz-III/Monowitz plant (Upper Silesia). Ploesti was believed to be the Third Reich’s AchillesHeel, and the bomber crews were all warned in advance that as long as the target was destroyed, it would be considered worthwhile even [[HeroicSacrifice if every plane was lost and every man was killed]]. The attack force was assembled in Libya, where a full-scale mock-up of Ploesti was assembled in the Sahara Desert for practice runs, as the mission required careful choreography and split-second timing to hit the target area from multiple directions at treetop level (well below the minimum safe altitude to drop bombs, requiring the ordnance to have time-delay fuses), overwhelming its defenses while also preventing any American planes from being hit by the blast of bombs already dropped. Originally called Operation Soapsuds, it was renamed Tidal Wave at the recommendation of UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill. To avoid tipping off the Germans as to Ploesti’s vulnerability, Allied commanders chose to stop all reconnaissance flights over the area. Unfortunately, this meant they weren’t aware of a failed Soviet raid that prompted the ''Luftwaffe'' and the Romanian military to heavily augment the defenses. [[FinaglesLaw Things immediately started going wrong once the mission got started]], resulting in a whole heap of DisasterDominoes that ended up killing the mission. One bomber crashed on takeoff, one of the lead planes (''Wong Wongo'', flown by 1st Lt. Brian Flavelle) crashed into the Mediterranean due to unknown reasons; the backup lead plane, piloted by the Flavelle's childhood friend, left the formation to search over ''Wong Wongo's'' crash site and was unable to catch up again, forcing him to abort and the third in command, 1st Lt. John Palm’s ''Brewery Wagon'', to take the lead. Eleven more had to abort due to fuel problems, the bombers got separated because [[WeAreStrugglingTogether two Group commanders couldn’t agree on engine settings]], and mission commander Brigadier General Uzal Ent made a critical navigational error, turning at the wrong checkpoint and leading half of the formation off course. Only one formation, that led by ''Brewery Wagon,'' attacked as planned, but it was shot down in flames with no survivors as they made their bomb run. The carefully-planned timing went completely to hell, and the attacking bombers faced not only much heavier opposition than anticipated, but also friendly bombs exploding in their faces and many near-collisions with other [=B-24s=]. The incredibly low altitude resulted in the bombers' gunners trading fire with anti-aircraft batteries at point-blank range and pilots having to maneuver over and around smokestacks, trees, and even fence lines and haystacks. 53 American bombers were lost[[note]] ''Jose Carioca'', a B-24 of the 93rd Bombardment Group, was shot down by a Romanian fighter over the city’s outskirts, spun out of control, crashed on a street, and slid several blocks before exploding in the Ploesti Women’s Prison, killing the bomber’s crew and nearly 100 civilians on the ground[[/note]], and 55 more came back with serious damage and casualties aboard[[note]] One B-24 had 365 distinct holes shot in it[[/note]]. 440 men (average age 19) were killed[[note]]One Romanian farmer grabbed his rifle when a B-24 crashed into the field outside his house. He found nine of the ten Americans aboard dead, while an 18-year-old gunner was still barely conscious despite having been [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe torn in half at the waist]]. The farmer [[MercyKill shot him in the head to ease his agony]][[/note]] and 220 more captured or missing. Five men received the Medal of Honor, more than any other single operation in history, three of them posthumous[[note]] Lt. Col. Addison Baker, commander of the 93rd Bombardment Group (Heavy), and his copilot, Maj. John Jerstad, posthumously received theirs for maintaining their Group Lead position after heavy damage to their B-24, ''Hell’s Wench'', forced them to jettison their bombs before reaching their target—the Columbia Aquila refinery—, then staying at the controls and trying to gain altitude to allow their crew to bail out. 2nd Lt. Lloyd Herbert Hughes of the 398th BG(H) posthumously received his for staying on his bomb run ''while burning alive'' after his plane, ''Ole Kickapoo'' was badly damaged by ground fire, then set afire by the explosion of a bomb from another B-24. Hughes’s bomber crashed moments after dropping their bombs on the Steaua Romana refinery, killing Hughes and four of his crew and mortally wounding four more, leaving two others miraculously uninjured. Col. John “Killer” Kane, commander of the 98th Bombardment Group, and Col. Leon Johnson, commander of the 44th, were the only surviving recipients, leading their respective groups through hellish fire to hit the Astra Romana and Columbia Aquila complexes[[/note]]. The refineries were damaged, but not critically, as most of them were operating below capacity anyway, and in fact, within a month, [[SenselessSacrifice most of them were producing considerably more fuel and lubricants than they had the day before the attack]]. Ultimately the Ploesti refineries only stopped supplying the Germans in the aftermath of Malinovsky and Tobulkhin's ''Jassy–Kishinev'' Offensive of August 1944, during which Soviet troops secured the facilities as Romania switched sides.[[note]]Several historians will, however, point out that while the primary manufacturing capabilities of the Ploesti refineries were unaffected, there was significant damage to the ''auxillary'' systems and reserve storage tanks, which was not repaired by 1945. There is some speculation that this damage meant that, while the refinery never lost its mainline production, the lack of these secondary and auxillary storage would come to bite Germany in the ass later in the war, when such reserves would have been vital to the war effort.[[/note]]
* Several major air strikes by USAAF B-17s against targets in central and southern Germany without friendly fighter escorts. The first Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid, for instance cost 60 bombers shot down, another 60 damaged beyond repair, and over 1,000 casualties, without doing enough damage to the target (a ball-bearing manufacturing plant). Missions against Stuttgart and Bremen had a similar butcher’s bill for equally-disappointing results. In the face of unsustainable losses, the 8th Air Force had to limit its bombing missions to occupied France and the Low Countries where Allied fighters could protect the heavies in the fall of 1943 until the long-range P-51 Mustang became available.

* In 1981 the [[BadassIsraeli Israeli Air Force]] pulled off an impossible mission in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera Operation Opera]], the long range attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor. A force of heavily laden F-16's and F-15's traveled across Jordan and Saudi Arabia at altitudes as low as 30 meters before popping up to completely destroy the reactor complex. Ground defenses were taken completely by surprise and not a single Israeli aircraft was damaged.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Focus Operation Focus]] was the opening series of air strikes that Israel used to preempt an Arab invasion and win what came to be known as the Six Day War. The attack made use of almost the entire Israeli Air Force with only a handful of planes left in reserve to defend its home airspace and comprised a go-for-broke gamble to disable the air forces of its enemies to pave the way for an Israeli ground strike. Preceded by detailed planning and practice to, especially in the area of quick turning its strike aircraft to make followup sorties, Operation Focus achieved complete surprised and by noon, the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian Air Forces, with 452 aircraft, were completely destroyed.

** Not an air-strike (usually) but Pakistani (and Indian) operations in Siachen, routinely flying helicopters at altitudes of 22 thousand feet or more through the highest mountains in the world. And did I state that the altitude is more then 10,000 feet above the normal operating ceiling of the aircraft?
* The famous RAF Dambusters [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise Operation Chastise]] mission involved flying big, lumbering strategic bombers so low over the target dam reservoirs that the German AA guns couldn't depress enough to fire at them. They were in fact flying so insanely low that at least one of the bombers had to abort the mission because it took damage from ''clipping a tree''. Not surprisingly, it was that unit which later attacked the ''Tirpitz''.
* During the first deployment of the F-22 at Red Flag, the U.S. Air Force's largest air war exercise, the single squadron operating it was effortlessly curbstomping everyone. At one point, out of desperation, the Red Flag AcePilots mounted a run through a canyon at night in an attempt to ambush the F-22s. Didn't work, as the F-22s still managed to pick them up, but an impressive attempt nontheless.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jericho Operation Jericho]]. What do you do if you learn the [[SecretPolice Gestapo]] have captured some of the leaders of LaResistance, are holding them in Amiens prison, and are going to execute them in the morning? Well how about sending a flight to bomb the guardhouse and blow holes in the walls - without hitting the cell blocks - so the prisoners can escape. All done at low level, in broad daylight and with unguided bombs to boot. Also, the officer in charge of the operation had no prior experience in low-level attacks, and - more to the spirit of the trope - the bombers had to attack in ''bad weather''.

* [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII December 7th, 1941]]: The Japanese military attacks American bases in Hawaii (The Philippine Islands were also attacked that day), [[SittingDuck catching the defenders by surprise]] and causing widespread damage. The Americans thought that Hawaii was too distant from Japanese bases to be vulnerable to attack, and assumed that the assault would focus on the Philippines. The Americans would lose over 2,400 men, with 19 ships sunk or damaged in the battle and nearly 200 aircraft destroyed. Military thought at the time believed land based aircraft would almost always defeat carrier aircraft, making such an attack very risky.

* During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, one of the earliest Allied victories in the Pacific was the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid Doolittle Raid]], named for the commander, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle. To pull the raid off, they had to modify a group of twin-engined B-25 Mitchell bombers to launch from an aircraft carrier that was ''barely'' long enough to actually get land-based planes airborne,[[note]]Though, really, the B-25 was the most-suited plane for this operation at the time, since it had an impressively low takeoff speed of only 60-80 mph. [[/note]] all so they could drop a few firebombs on Japanese cities and make the Japanese think they were at greater risk of attack than they actually were.[[note]]Unimpressive as it sounds, this actually had a drastic effect on Japan's public morale and military doctrine; despite lampooning it as the "Do-Nothing Raid" in propaganda broadcasts, the attack all but shattered the idea that the Japanese home islands were protected from direct enemy attack, a prospect that had held up for ''centuries'' at least. It also prompted the IJN and IJA to begin new campaigns with the goal of destroying or taking and and all airbases that held even the ''remote'' chance of housing strategic bombers within striking distance of the home islands, since they were not aware that the planes had come from a carrier (not that the idea of B-25's coming off a carrier was particularly believable anyways), and these campaigns would eventually result in the decisive Battle of Midway in 1942.[[/note]] Most of the planes [[OneWayTrip ended up ditching in China or crashing in the sea]],[[note]]One such plane, the ''Ruptured Duck'', was flown by Lt. Ted Lawson, who would go on to write about his part in the raid and subsequent escape back to friendy lines in his novel, ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' , which would later be adapted into a [[Film/ThirtySecondsOverTokyo film of the same name]]. For its part, the ''Ruptured Duck'' crashed offshore of the Chinese mainland as Lawson attempted to land it on a beach, hoping to land it intact while his crew got their bearings and located the nearest friendly airfield to fly to, but a misjudgment in distance caused it to come down in the water instead, and the crew hastily abandoned the plane as it sank. ''Ruptured Duck'' itself was fished out of the ocean by the Japanese, who took the wrecked bomber back to Japan and put it on display as a trophy; however, it disappeared some time between 1942-1945, with the most accept theory being that it was broken up for scrap metal in the face of Japan's increasingly desperate war effort.[[/note]] with only a one landing successfully in Siberia[[note]] Due to the complicated nature of Stalin’s alliance with the US against Germany and His nonaggression pact with Japan, the plane and crew were interned for several months. They offered to take their B-25 west and fly with the Red Air Force against the Nazis until such time as they could be repatriated, but this was refused. The crew eventually escaped and paid a smuggler to drive them over the Chinese border, where they found friendly KMT forces who sent them home[[/note]].

* When Argentina landed forces on the British-controlled Falkland Islands in 1982, the nearest British ships were weeks away; plenty of time for the Argentine forces to dig in on the Falkland Islands. Even with in-air refueling, the distance from the nearest British airfield to the Falklands exceeded the maximum operational range of the best British bomber aircraft several times over. But there's nothing stopping you from refueling the tanker aircraft in-air... or refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the tanker aircraft in air... or refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the tanker aircraft refueling the... you get the picture. The end result was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck Operation Black Buck]], launching a fleet of ''eleven'' 'Victor' tanker aircraft and a single 'Vulcan' bomber from Ascension Island (off the western coast of Africa). The Victors refuelled the Vulcan, and each other, repeatedly during the ''sixteen hour'' journey to the Falkland Islands and back again. The primary 'Victor', which had three pilots in the two-man cockpit, was refueled four times on the approach and once more on the return. It held the record for the longest-distance bombing-run until ''1991''. Oh, and they did it again - flying a total of ''five'' 12,200km sorties, out of seven attempts (the other two were cancelled due to weather or equipment problems). While considered effective in both psychological-warfare and propaganda terms, the actual effectiveness versus Argentinian readiness is still debated - for instance, the Port Stanely Airport runway was successfully hit by Black Buck 1, but while the damage proved difficult to repair, aircraft were still able to operate from the shortened runway.
* Torpedo bombing in general. Early air-launched torpedoes required the bomber to fly at low altitude and low speed to properly lay in their attacks, all while enemy AntiAir gunners and fighters did their damnedest to shoot them down. And once you released the torpedo, there was no guarantee that it wouldn't malfunction, sinking into the water, drifting off target, or even striking the target directly and failing to detonate at all. Torpedo designs were improved considerably by the end of the war, but the days of dedicated torpedo bombers were numbered with the introduction of the first anti-ship missiles in 1944.
** To emphasize the difficulty of torpedo bombing, at the Battle of Midway four American squadrons (three Navy, and one Army) launched torpedo attacks on the Japanese carriers. Not a single American air-launched torpedo struck its target that day. The three Navy squadrons were savaged by Japanese defenders, with Torpedo 8 being almost entirely wiped out[[note]]The Army squadron escaped relatively unharmed thanks to the high speed and defensive armament of their B-26 Marauders, but failed to hit any of their targets[[/note]]. Ultimately the Japanese carriers were destroyed by American dive bombers, which had the good timing and luck to press their attacks while the Japanese fighters were away, and the carriers [[MadeOfExplodium arming and fueling their planes]] for their first attempt at sinking the American fleet.

** So the Air Force Pave Lows led the Army Apaches under radio silence and cover of darkness (the airmen used glowsticks to signal the Army crews when necessary) to the targets, and the Army crews set up their attacks. The first radio signal of the mission was a ten second warning that the first Hellfire missiles were about to hit their targets, and the Apaches proceeded to unload their payloads of missiles, rockets, and 30mm cannon shells on the Iraqi radar sites, in coordination with the first wave of Coalition jet bombers, timing their attack runs to exploit the breach and attack targets deeper in Iraqi territory before word of the attacks could make their way to the Iraqi leadership.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_Q_Strike Package Q Airstrike]] was the largest single airstrike in the Gulf War, with at least 78 aircraft participating. Before the mission even started, however, there were confused orders: the main target was the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, the location of the Osirak Nuclear Reactor targeted by Israel about a decade earlier and mentioned previously on the page, but a number of secondary targets were also added, located within the heavily-defended capital of Baghdad. When the strike itself commenced, other problems popped up; bad weather affected their aerial refueling runs, forcing four aircraft to abandon the mission. Wild Weasels were supposed to deal with some of the surface-to-air missile sites, but due to fuel shortages, were also forced to prematurely abandon their missions, forcing the strike aircraft to handle the anti-aircraft alone. As a result, many of them were forced to jettison their munitions prematurely in order to evade incoming missiles. Two fighters were lost during the strike, with many others damaged, and their primary target, the nuclear reactor, was not significantly damaged. Due to the mission's failure, future strikes would be smaller and better-organized, and downtown Baghdad would only be targeted by stealth fighters for the remainder of the campaign.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave Operation Tidal Wave]] a low-level strike against the Ploiești oil refineries conducted by 178 B-24 Liberator heavy bombers of the US Army Air Forces. These facilities supplied Germany with 1/2 of her petroleum products, and taking them out was widely regarded as the most critical element of the USAAF’s “Oil Plan” targeting all natural and synthetic oil production facilities including the wells at Balaton (west Hungary) and Auschwitz-III/Monowitz plant (Upper Silesia). Ploesti was believed to be the Third Reich’s AchillesHeel, and the bomber crews were all warned in advance that as long as the target was destroyed, it would be considered worthwhile even [[HeroicSacrifice if every plane was lost and every man was killed]]. The attack force was assembled in Libya, where a full-scale mock-up of Ploesti was assembled in the Sahara Desert for practice runs, as the mission required careful choreography and split-second timing to hit the target area from multiple directions at treetop level (well below the minimum safe altitude to drop bombs, requiring the ordnance to have time-delay fuses), overwhelming its defenses while also preventing any American planes from being hit by the blast of bombs already dropped. Originally called Operation Soapsuds, it was renamed Tidal Wave at the recommendation of UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill. To avoid tipping off the Germans as to Ploesti’s vulnerability, Allied commanders chose to stop all reconnaissance flights over the area. Unfortunately, this meant they weren’t aware of a failed Soviet raid that prompted the ''Luftwaffe'' and the Romanian military to heavily augment the defenses. [[FinaglesLaw Things immediately started going wrong once the mission got started]], resulting in a whole heap of DisasterDominoes that ended up killing the mission. One bomber crashed on takeoff, one of the lead planes (''Wong Wongo'', flown by 1st Lt. Brian Flavelle) crashed into the Mediterranean due to unknown reasons; the backup lead plane, piloted by the Flavelle's childhood friend, left the formation to search over ''Wong Wongo's'' crash site and was unable to catch up again, forcing him to abort and the third in command, 1st Lt. John Palm’s ''Brewery Wagon'', to take the lead. Eleven more had to abort due to fuel problems, the bombers got separated because [[WeAreStrugglingTogether two Group commanders couldn’t agree on engine settings]], and mission commander Brigadier General Uzal Ent made a critical navigational error, turning at the wrong checkpoint and leading half of the formation off course. Only one formation, that led by ''Brewery Wagon,'' attacked as planned, but it was shot down in flames with no survivors as they made their bomb run. The carefully-planned timing went completely to hell, and the attacking bombers faced not only much heavier opposition than anticipated, but also friendly bombs exploding in their faces and many near-collisions with other [=B-24s=]. The incredibly low altitude resulted in the bombers' gunners trading fire with anti-aircraft batteries at point-blank range and pilots having to maneuver over and around smokestacks, trees, and even fence lines and haystacks. 53 American bombers were lost[[note]] ''Jose Carioca'', a B-24 of the 93rd Bombardment Group, was shot down by a Romanian fighter over the city’s outskirts, spun out of control, crashed on a street, and slid several blocks before exploding in the Ploesti Women’s Prison, killing the bomber’s crew and nearly 100 civilians on the ground[[/note]], and 55 more came back with serious damage and casualties aboard[[note]] One B-24 had 365 distinct holes shot in it[[/note]]. 440 men (average age 19) were killed[[note]]One Romanian farmer grabbed his rifle when a B-24 crashed into the field outside his house. He found nine of the ten Americans aboard dead, while an 18-year-old gunner was still barely conscious despite having been [[BodyHorror torn in half at the waist]]. The farmer [[MercyKill shot him in the head to ease his agony]][[/note]] and 220 more captured or missing. Five men received the Medal of Honor, more than any other single operation in history, three of them posthumous[[note]] Lt. Col. Addison Baker, commander of the 93rd Bombardment Group (Heavy), and his copilot, Maj. John Jerstad, posthumously received theirs for maintaining their Group Lead position after heavy damage to their B-24, ''Hell’s Wench'', forced them to jettison their bombs before reaching their target—the Columbia Aquila refinery—, then staying at the controls and trying to gain altitude to allow their crew to bail out. 2nd Lt. Lloyd Herbert Hughes of the 398th BG(H) posthumously received his for staying on his bomb run ''while burning alive'' after his plane, ''Ole Kickapoo'' was badly damaged by ground fire, then set afire by the explosion of a bomb from another B-24. Hughes’s bomber crashed moments after dropping their bombs on the Steaua Romana refinery, killing Hughes and four of his crew and mortally wounding four more, leaving two others miraculously uninjured. Col. John “Killer” Kane, commander of the 98th Bombardment Group, and Col. Leon Johnson, commander of the 44th, were the only surviving recipients, leading their respective groups through hellish fire to hit the Astra Romana and Columbia Aquila complexes[[/note]]. The refineries were damaged, but not critically, as most of them were operating below capacity anyway, and in fact, within a month, [[SenselessSacrifice most of them were producing considerably more fuel and lubricants than they had the day before the attack]]. Ultimately the Ploesti refineries only stopped supplying the Germans in the aftermath of Malinovsky and Tobulkhin's ''Jassy–Kishinev'' Offensive of August 1944, during which Soviet troops secured the facilities as Romania switched sides.[[note]]Several historians will, however, point out that while the primary manufacturing capabilities of the Ploesti refineries were unaffected, there was significant damage to the ''auxillary'' systems and reserve storage tanks, which was not repaired by 1945. There is some speculation that this damage meant that, while the refinery never lost its mainline production, the lack of these secondary and auxillary storage would come to bite Germany in the ass later in the war, when such reserves would have been vital to the war effort.[[/note]]

[[/folder]]