In the fall of 1943, the Germans moved many of their armament plants eastward, out of convenient range for Allied bombers flying from England. In order to bring the plants under attack, Gen. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, proposed "shuttle bombing"-staging US aircraft into and out of airfields on the Russian front, which was much closer to targets in eastern Germany and Poland. If B-17s could land at bases in Soviet territory instead of making the long round trip back to England or Italy, they could reach what would otherwise be the most distant targets. They could fly additional missions while deployed to the Russian bases and strike still more hard-to-reach targets on the flight home.
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