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Bombers Over Japan

This is one of a series of Time Life books and as such has loads of photographs and a lot of good written material in it.

I'll note a few of the most interesting things I found:

The mines that U.S. planes sewed around Japan were responsible for the sinking of around 600,00 tons of shipping.

From around March of 1945 Japan began holding their resources back, including planes, in order to use them in the great final struggle against an actual American invasion of the main Japanese islands.

From the battle of Midway to the end of 1943 Japan lost around 10,000 of their pilots in battles.

The importance of Japanese searchlight in detecting B-29's is covered.

The importance of attitude that led to kamikaze usage is also discussed. This included pilots that were dedicated to using their planes to ram B-29's in order to destroy them.

Chapter 5 covers the issue of using the firebombs on Japanese civilians.

The temperature of certain parts of Tokyo during the great firebombing reached 1,800 degrees F. Almost 16 square miles of the city were destroyed. (The number of people killed in this firebombing was about equal to or maybe more than those killed in Hiroshima due to the atomic bomb.)

This is just a small sample of the kinds of things covered in this worthwhile book.



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