Air Raids on Tokyo (You Tube)

The is a program called Battlefront: The Last Stronghold. It opens talking about high-altitude B-29 bombing of Japan. This was the early bombing effort and it really didn't work that well. When LeMay took over, things changed to lower-level bombing and bombing at night using incendiary bombs.

The effect was incredibly deadly. Fires would be started. If the weather conditions were right, high winds would develop which would fan the fires even more. Since the Japanese buildings were mostly wood and paper, the flames could spread freely. Attempts were made to pull down all the buildings in certain areas, and there were fire departments (of a sort), but neither was enough to stop the vast destruction of city after city by the firebombing.

This is taken over Tokyo during a major firebombing raid.

The program refers to the first raids, which were flown from China and were not very effective.

The B-29 weighed about 70 tons and could fly at 30,000 feet, which is about 5.68 miles high.

The second version of the raids were from Saipan and Tinian. Again, high-altitude bombing proved fairly ineffective.

The Japanese still had a lot of planes left, and some pilots, but these were being saved for the expected American invasion of Japan itself. All the planes were going to be used in kamikaze attacks.

One of the problems with the high-altitude bombing was the winds which tended to cause the bombs to go off target.

Early 1945, the raids are getting more accurate. Children and some others are evacuated to the country. The rest are put into civilian defense brigades.

A lot of bombers were being lost, some over Japan and some on the way back.

The decision was made to fly from 5 to 8,000 feet, reduce the weaponry, and carry more bombs.

Around 300 B-29s were on the first firebombing mission over Tokyo, which ended up killing more than 90,000 people.

17 square miles of Tokyo were destroyed.

The planes carried few weapons and less fuel, but things worked out well anyhow.

More incendiary bombs are dropped.

American fighter planes were able to do strafing runs since the Japanese were hoarding their planes and not really rising to the challenge.

It then talks about the kamikaze, including those who would ram the B-29s.

The Enola Gay, and what followed, eliminated the need for an actual invasion of Japan itself.

Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page