On several occasions, Allied bombing raids hit targets in Switzerland resulting in fatalities and property damage.

While Allied forces explained the causes of violations as navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilots' errors, fear was expressed in Switzerland that some neutrality violations were intended to exert pressure on the country to end its economic cooperation with Nazi Germany.

[1] In addition to bombing raids, air attacks by individual fighter planes strafed Swiss targets toward the end of the war.

The Swiss military, in turn, attacked Allied aircraft overflying Switzerland with fighters and anti-aircraft cannon.

[5] From 1941 to 1942, Allied bombers very rarely flew over Switzerland, because the Swiss authorities, under German pressure, prescribed black-outs in order to complicate navigation for U.S. and British air crews.

[10] Allied planes bombed Switzerland about seventy times during World War II, killing 84 people.

Although these bombings were attributed to error, some historians have suspected that the Allies wanted to send a warning to Switzerland for having collaborated with Germany.

[11][failed verification] The daylight bombing of Schaffhausen on 1 April 1944 by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was the most serious of all incidents.

[13][14] At the insistence of the Swiss government for an explanation, Allied investigations into the incident found that bad weather broke up the American formation over France, and that high winds that nearly doubled the ground speed of the bombers confused the navigators (two other widely scattered cities in Germany and France were also mistakenly bombed during the same mission).

As Schaffhausen is situated on the right bank (north side) of the Rhine river, it was apparently assumed to be Ludwigshafen am Rhein.

On 22 February 1945, thirteen USAAF air attacks on Switzerland took place with Stein am Rhein receiving the most damage.

[1][15] During 1940, minor attacks on Geneva, Renens, Basel, and Zurich were conducted by the Royal Air Force.

[19] Prosecutors for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East once discussed this case as further precedent to prosecute Japanese pilots involved in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

However, they quickly dropped the idea after realizing there was no international law that protected neutral areas and nationals specifically from attack by aircraft.