Kampfgeschwader 100 (KG 100) was a Luftwaffe medium and heavy bomber wing of World War II and the first military aviation unit to use a precision-guided munition (the Fritz X anti-ship glide bomb) in combat to sink a warship (the Italian battleship Roma) on 9 September 1943.

KG 100 was created from Kampfgruppe 100, a specialist pathfinder unit formed on 26 August 1938 as Luftnachrichten Abteilung 100 at Köthen.

It spent the inter-war years training on high-altitude flights to North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and northern Finland.

KG 100 was expected to assist in the destruction of the powerful Black Sea Fleet supplying the Soviet beachheads.

[4][5] On the group's first operation it lost a bomber to a Soviet fighter attack over the Kerch Strait: the Red Air Force (VVS) was active over the sea-lanes.

The Black Sea Fleet transported 100,000 men and hundreds of artillery pieces to Kerch between 20 January and 11 February.

[12] Eight days into the air offensive, Leutnant Herbert Klein scored a direct hit on the 4,727-ton Abkhaziya which exploded and sank.

[13] On 26 June the supply ship Tashkent evaded I./KG 100's attacks but the escorting destroyer Bezuprechnyy was sunk by StG 77.

Commander Vasiliy Yeroshenko rushed around the bridge observing the dive-bomber attacks and calling out orders for evasive action.

In the following days, KG 100 returned to the port and crews reported mass destruction of entire streets with the use of heavy bombs.

The minelayer Komintern, the destroyers Soobrazitelny and Nezamozhnik, the patrol vessels Shkval and Shtom, a gunboat, one torpedo boat and two other transports were also damaged.

Richthofen, who had lost I./KG 100 to Fliegerfuhrer Ostsee after 2 July, requested the group to rejoin Fliegerkorps VIII near Stalingrad.

[6] On 8 September 1942 the group ran into Yakovlev Yak-1s from the 520 IAP on a transfer flight as the bombers approached their target at Kamyshin.

On 27/28 October 1942, the group bombed the city of Astrakhan at night, while two freighters were claimed destroyed and five damaged in the Caspian Sea.

[19] The first German loss over the Caspian Sea occurred on 31 October/1 November when Unteroffizier Hans Zebhe failed to return from a night sortie.

On 15 November 1942 Leutnant Herbert Kuntz's crew scored a bomb hit on a 1,300 GRT transport ship.

On 23 December they carried out heavy close air support attacks on the Soviet encirclement to assist Operation Winter Storm.

[23] From Kirovograd it flew attacks against Soviet bridgeheads at Kremenchug and Zaporozhye in October in midst of the Battle of the Dnieper.

It was handed to Fliegerkorps VIII and began operations on the Moscow sector and flew day and night against the Soviet counter-offensives.

In May 1942, operations in the Levantine Sea, against airfields in El Daba, Fuka, Sollum, and support for Axis forces in the Siege of Tobruk.

It bombed RAF Luqa on 15 October but lost its commanding officer Major Horst Röbling killed in action.

It flew small-scale night attacks until 10 November 1942 when it was recalled to Sicily in response to Operation Torch, and the Anglo-American landings in Morocco, and Algeria.

Some Staffeln were relocated to Belgrade in Yugoslavia to begin Case White against Yugoslav partisans from 5 February to 2 March 1943.

II./KG 100 flew the first PGM ordnance attack in history, using the rocket-boosted Henschel Hs 293 ASM (guided by the same Kehl-Straßurg system as the Fritz X used) off the northern tip of Spain on 25 August and damaged HMS Bideford.

[29] The same afternoon, 11 Do 217s of III./KG 100, led by commanding officer Bernhard Jope, sank the battleship Roma and damaged Italia.

Staffeln exchanged identities meaning the last unit belonging to II Gruppe in the Mediterranean passed to III./KG 100.

While here, it was part of the retaliatory bombing raids ordered by Adolf Hitler in retribution for RAF Bomber Command operations over Germany.

A second Staffelkapitän of the unit was lost on 20/21 April when Herbert Dostlebe and his crew were killed by Flying Officer J. H. Corre from No.

The group was relocated to forward airfields in northern France and used Fritz X bombs in the attacks on Portsmouth harbour on 29/30 April, in which it tried and failed to sink two battleships.

On 26 June it could muster 26 Do 217s but after operations against shipping in the Seine and English Channel it lost six bombers on 4/5 July.