Why did Germany not bomb US in WW2?

by fifaplayer0519

Title says it all, they never even tried? Just curious why this would be, Japan never tried again after pearl harbor either.

Lubyak

Japan absolutely did try. It's just really hard because the United States is very far away from Japan. Pearl Harbor was already the absolute limit of what Japan could manage logistically. Similar issues apply to Germany. Remember that the Allied bomber offensive was being launched from the UK, only a few hundred miles away from targets in Germany. Meanwhile, even from France, it's a journey of a few thousand miles to the continental United States. That means you need a plane that can fly double that because you presumably want to come back after your bombing raid, and the plane needs to not only carry fuel to get across the Atlantic and back but also carry a meaningful bombload, and then you need to build enough planes to do actual damage. All of these are massive technological and industrial hurdles that nobody would really be able to overcome until decades later.

jschooltiger

To add a bit to /u/Lubyak's answer, you may be interested in these older threads I wrote about Japan's (lack of) logistical capability to do more than lead pinprick raids against the U.S. mainland.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dxlh4/what_did_japan_hope_to_accomplish_by_attacking/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/80xu8w/did_the_japanese_seriously_consider_invading/