Point of No Return

This is a 1979 book about the bombing of Japan by B-29s. There's a very detailed section on the history of the B-29s, including various problems that they had, and their use at first to attack Japan from China. It goes into the history of the types of bombing (high altitude vs. low altitude), who headed the various types of attack, and the attacks on through the firebombing of Japanese cities and the use of the atomic bombs.

The first time a B-29 flew was on September 21, 1942.

Apparently, even though early B-29 attacks didn't do a significant amount of damage they did create a problem for the Japanese government in trying to explain just how the planes could get over Japan and bomb without the ultra-powerful Japanese military being able to stop them.

As far as high-altitude bombing went, only about 5 percent of the bombs landed within 1000 feet of the target.

One of the reasons for the night-time firebombing attacks was that this would mean the B-29's would be returning around Iwo Jima in the daylight in case they needed to make an emergency landing there.

LeMay said that firebombing the civilian areas was justified in that many civilian homes were involved in various forms in the industrial effort in order to aid the bigger shops.

Each plane carried around six tons of firebombs. Radio Tokyo referred to the firebombing as 'slaughter bombing.'

It took several days before recon photos could be taken over Tokyo since it took that long for the smoke to clear enough to get photos.

The book goes into the attacks on various cities, the amount of damage done, people killed, houses destroyed, etc. The book devotes a good bit of space to something often overlooked, and that is the role the B-29s had in the mining operation around Japan, referred to as Operation Starvation. Between the mining efforts and the effects of American submarines, Japan's merchant ability dropped considerably.

The book also discusses the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, the work leading up to the dropping of the atomic bombs, and their use in the war.

This is a rather old but extremely good, complete book on the subject.

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