On the night of 9–10 March 1945, 334 B-29s took off to raid with 279 of them dropping 1,665 tons of bombs on Tokyo. Operation Meetinghouse Ī birds-eye view over the Ningyōchō district of Nihonbashi following Operation Meetinghouse LeMay ordered all defensive guns but the tail gun removed from the B-29s so that the aircraft would be lighter and use less fuel. After this raid, LeMay ordered the B-29 bombers to attack again but at a relatively low altitude of 5,000 to 9,000 ft (1,500 to 2,700 m) and at night, because Japan's anti-aircraft artillery defenses were weakest in this altitude range, and the fighter defenses were ineffective at night.
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Tokyo was hit by incendiaries on 25 February 1945 when 174 B-29s flew a high altitude raid during daylight hours and destroyed around 643 acres (260 ha) (2.6 km 2) of the snow-covered city, using 453.7 tons of mostly incendiaries with some fragmentation bombs. The first such raid was against Kobe on 4 February 1945. These trials demonstrated the effectiveness of incendiary bombs against wood-and-paper buildings, and resulted in Curtis LeMay's ordering the bombers to change tactics to utilize these munitions against Japan. Between May and September 1943, bombing trials were conducted on the Japanese Village set-piece target, located at the Dugway Proving Grounds. The high-altitude bombing attacks using general-purpose bombs were observed to be ineffective by USAAF leaders due to high winds-later discovered to be the jet stream-which carried the bombs off target. Operations from the Northern Mariana Islands commenced in November 1944 after the XXI Bomber Command was activated there. The initial raids were carried out by the Twentieth Air Force operating out of mainland China in Operation Matterhorn under XX Bomber Command, but these could not reach Tokyo. Once Allied ground forces had captured islands sufficiently close to Japan, airfields were built on those islands (particularly Saipan and Tinian) and B-29s could reach Japan for bombing missions. Almost 90% of the bombs dropped on the home islands of Japan were delivered by this type of bomber. The key development for the bombing of Japan was the B-29 Superfortress strategic bomber, which had an operational range of 3,250 nautical miles (3,740 mi 6,020 km) and was capable of attacking at high altitude above 30,000 feet (9,100 m), where enemy defenses were very weak. Leaflet dropped over Tokyo, warning civilians to leave the city.
Some modern post-war analysts have called the raid a war crime due to the targeting of civilian infrastructure and the ensuing mass loss of civilian life. Over 50% of Tokyo's industry was spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods firebombing cut the whole city's output in half. B-29 raids from those islands began on 17 November 1944, and lasted until 15 August 1945, the day of Japanese surrender. Strategic bombing and urban area bombing began in 1944 after the long-range B-29 Superfortress bomber entered service, first deployed from China and thereafter the Mariana Islands. The US first mounted a seaborne, small-scale air raid on Tokyo (the "Doolittle Raid") in April 1942. In comparison, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945 resulted in the immediate death of between 70,000 and 150,000 people. 16 square miles (41 km 2 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.
#Ww2 aftermath on us cities series
The Bombing of Tokyo ( 東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Force during the Pacific campaigns of World War II.
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