In the first day of the war, the Americans and their allies had flown hundreds of sorties against Iraq, dropped thousands of pounds of bombs and met virtually no resistance.

The allies have flown at least half the total missions, combat and otherwise.

The U.S. and allies flew to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

We and our European allies will fly against Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's forces to stop them from overrunning the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

In an interview on Friday, for instance, Mr. Bacon estimated the allies had flown 2,700 missions in the first nine days of the war and that about 15 percent had been combat missions.

The general said on Monday, in one illustration of the ferocity of the onslaught, that the allies have flown one bombing mission a minute, on average, since the war began.

As of Feb. 4, the United States and its allies had flown slightly more than 44,000 sorties in the Persian Gulf.

During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Switzerland refused to allow the United States and its allies to fly over the country to supply their military operation against Iraq.

From June 2002 until the beginning of the Iraq war, the allies flew 21,736 sorties over southern Iraq and attacked 349 targets, including the cable stations.

Because the western allies flew in all the supplies that normally came by land, the Berlin Blockade is also known as the Berlin Airlift.