36. The First Aerial Bombing on American Soil
In 1925, Charlie Birger partnered up with another bootlegger gang run by Carl Shelton and his brothers, to jointly transport imported booze from Florida to Chicago. The partnership quickly fell apart, however, because of cheating in the collection of the proceeds and divvying up the profits. Things escalated – quickly. In one incident in 1926, Birger’s gang was attacked by a Shelton homemade tank: a two and a half-ton truck covered in steel armor, with a turret from which numerous firearms protruded.
A month later, the Sheltons upped the ante and escalated things some more, when they hired an airplane to drop sticks of dynamite over a Birger hideout. Nobody was hurt, but it made history as the first known aerial bombing in the US. Birger fought back in a more traditional way, with assassinations and ambuscades.
