At the end of 1944, Li Mei was transferred to the Pacific Theater to bomb Japan. During this period, he caused nearly 500,000 deaths and 8 million homeless people in Japan, which is a nightmare for the Japanese. But who knew that soon after the end of the war, Li Mei was awarded by Japan with the highest honor representing the Japanese soldiers, the Order of the Rising Sun, First Class.
Curtiss Emerson Lee was born in Columbus, Ohio, on November 15, 1906. His father was a blacksmith and his mother was a carpenter. Because it was difficult to find a job, Li Mei followed her father around the country since she was a child, and it was not until Li Mei went to high school that the family returned to their hometown of Columbus.
After graduating from high school, Li Mei enrolled in Civil Engineering at Ohio State University and earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering.
However, this science student is not the same.
During college, Li Mei joined the Pershing Rifle Society. Founded by John Joseph Pershing, the only U.S. army special general, nicknamed "General Hammer," the organization is dedicated to the selection and training of various physical, mental, and others to train future officers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Obviously, living a life of conformism is not what Li Mei wants, he wants to go to the battlefield! Therefore, while obtaining a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, Li Mei also completed the U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Course with honors. After graduation, he successfully joined the U.S. Border Patrol.
Li Mei was a military genius who went from a science student to a second lieutenant pilot in just two years, and by the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the subsequent entry of the United States into World War II, he had been promoted to major.
During this time, Li Mei found the love of his life, the bomber.
Li Mei did not smile, always had an image of no one to approach, and the only thing he had in mind was how to turn the bomber into a killing machine.
The reason why Li Mei liked bombers was because he was a faithful believer in the "strategic bombing theory" of the Italian military theorist Duhei, believing that by relying on bombers to systematically bomb enemy countries, he could win the war in the shortest possible time.
On this point, Li Mei has verified it very well in the European theater.
In 1942, Li Mei was ordered to lead the 305th Bomber Group, which he personally formed and trained, to the European Theater of Operations.
Before Li Meilai, when the Allied Air Force carried out air raids on the European continent, the bomber groups always took evasive tactical actions prematurely in order to avoid the anti-aircraft fire network, and although the losses were reduced, the hit rate was very touching.
After Li Mei arrived, after studying, he issued an order: No evasive tactical actions are allowed!
Li Mei did not joke, and then he led by example and personally led the pilots to start the bombing mission. In this battle, including the fighters piloted by Li Mei, a total of 6 aircraft were hit by shells, but the brigade achieved twice as many results than other brigades. Subsequently, Li Mei also invented the "staggered" flight formation, which made up for the defect that "no evasion action" was easy to hit.
In August 1944, Li Mei became the youngest major general in the U.S. Army (at that time the Aviation Corps was part of the Army).
Li Mei is a war fanatic, and even gave birth to the idea of dying on the battlefield, but at this time, Li Mei has become a treasure of the United States, in order to prevent Li Mei's impulsiveness, Congress forbid him to take off on the air, only responsible for command.
Therefore, in the documentary films of World War II, we often see Li Mei, who holds a cigar in his hand, saying something slowly and logically with his face, and what his cigar refers to must be gone!
At the end of 1944, Li Mei, who had had enough experience in the European Theater, was transferred to the Pacific Theater, and his cigar pointed to Tokyo, Japan.
Prior to this, Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle of the U.S. Air Force had led 16 B-25 bombers to bomb Tokyo, but both the hardware and tactics were not satisfactory, although the blow-up destroyed 90 Japanese buildings, which greatly encouraged the morale of the US military, but in fact only caused dozens of Civilian Deaths in Japan, and there was no loss for Japan.
But unexpectedly, the Japanese launched a frenzied retaliation, and as a result, in the case of insufficient preparation, the Battle of Midway was hastily launched, and the Japanese not only lost 4 aircraft carriers, but also hundreds of pilots of incalculable value.
On the contrary, at the same time that Li Mei arrived in the Pacific Theater, the long-range bomber "B-29" also began to roll off the assembly line.
The fighter has a maximum bomb carrying capacity of up to 9072 kg, a flight altitude of more than 10,000 meters, a refueling in the air, an endurance of up to 9,000 kilometers, and a very powerful precision strike capability against the target, known as the "super air fortress".
For this Li Mei, it can be said that she dozed off to send a pillow.
However, although Li Mei has 22 months of "barbecue experience" in the European theater, the high-altitude and daytime precision bombing tactics used in Europe do not work in Japan, because the wind speed over Japan is too strong, and flying too high will only throw a lonely one.
After thinking about it, Based on Japan's weak air defense capabilities and considering that most of the Japanese houses were wooden structures, Li Meisi made an extremely risky decision with a big hand - to bomb Japan at a low altitude at night with incendiary bombs.
The so-called incendiary bombs, or "napalm bombs", are not very humane. After the explosion, once it is stained with napalm, it will be like lard paste, viscous and resistant to burning, ineffective in slapping, ineffective in rolling on the ground, but more and more vigorous. Not only that, but this thing is also very easy to sputter, forming a secondary killing effect.
But from the perspective of lethality, this is really incredible, at least Li Mei likes it very much.
Although the average bomb load of the B-29 bomber is about 3 tons, Li Mei still feels that it is small. In order to carry more incendiary bombs, Li Mei not only ordered people to remove all the cannons and their ammunition on the B-29 fighter, but also limited the amount of fuel, which doubled the bomb load of the B-29.
On the evening of 9 March 1945, 334 B-29 bombers took off from Saipan airfield. At 0:17 a.m., when most Tokyo citizens were already asleep, the B-29 pilot jet swooped down. Li Mei was right to gamble that although the Japanese anti-aircraft artillery was fierce, due to the lack of artillery aiming radar, it could only shoot blindly in the air, and there was nothing that could be done with the B-29 bomber.
Soon, the guide bomb illuminated the dark city under the control of lights, and the B-29 fighter group almost "flew in the face", throwing 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs into the densely populated city in the direction of the guide bomb, and the nightmare began!
That night, the whole of Tokyo turned into a sea of fire, at a low altitude of 5,000 feet, the American pilots could even see countless Japanese people panicking, but the fire was like a gangrene of bones, how to escape could not escape, desperate cries like an ode to hell.
Many were burned to death, many more were smothered, and many hid in the fortified Meijiza Theater, where they suffocated from lack of oxygen. It is said that the corpses piled up in the courtyard are as high as 2 meters...
In this battle, all 22 industrial targets targeted by Li Mei were destroyed, more than 267,000 buildings were burned, 83,793 people were killed, and nearly 100,000 people were injured. Nearly a quarter of Tokyo was razed to the ground. Li Mei, only 9 bombers were destroyed.
This air raid history is called "Li Mei Fire Attack", and from the perspective of war alone, the US military has achieved amazing results! However, Li Mei did not stop there, and since then has carried out three bombings against Japan.
On May 26 of the same year, Li Mei launched 500 B-29 bombers to "sweep the tail" and use 4,000 tons of incendiary bombs to make Tokyo a "dead city", which is why the United States did not drop atomic bombs in Tokyo later, because Tokyo had no bombing value.
Li Mei's bombings directly caused nearly 500,000 deaths in Japan and 8 million people were left homeless. Compared with the atomic bombs that the United States later dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the lethality of the "Li Mei Fire Attack" was even more amazing!
Li Mei killed so many civilians, will she feel guilty?
Li Mei said after the war: "Killing the Japanese did not make me uneasy, what disturbed me was the end of the war." So I don't care how many Japanese were killed in our actions. ”
You might think that the latter is what the Japanese say about it.
But in fact, Li Mei waited not for the endless insults of the Japanese, but for the medal representing the highest honor of Japanese soldiers- the First Class Rising Sun Grand Ribbon.
The person who contributed to Li Mei's medal was named Genda Shi, who was one of the commanders of the plan to raid Pearl Harbor.
There is a theory that because MacArthur was not very clear about the organizational structure of the Japanese navy, genda took advantage of the crime, and later rose all the way to become the commander of Japan's first generation of air corps, the third generation of aviation chief of staff, and the final rank of air general, and more wonderfully, when he retired, the United States also awarded him a "general-level legion medal". In 1964, As a senator in Japan and president of the Liberal Democratic Party's Ministry of National Defense, Genda proposed that Li Mei be awarded the "Grand Ribbon of the Rising Sun of the First Class" and passed the proposal. Another theory is that Japan was "completely defeated", and they felt that Li Mei indirectly promoted Japan's surrender, so that the country could avoid the tragic end of "jade fragmentation of the whole people", in other words, Li Mei was still their benefactor to some extent, so li Mei was awarded the "Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun of the First Class".
Unfortunately, Li Mei did not seem to like this medal very much, basically never saw him wear it, but the most worn was the Soviet Patriotic War Medal.
It is not difficult to see that Li Mei is very sober. If the Allies had not won, the outcome might have been completely different. He will surely become a sinner for eternity and eventually be court-martialed. As Li Mei said, "If the United States loses the war, I fully believe that I will be tried for war crimes."
This is very realistic, because between countries, the premise of convincing people is that the fist is hard enough.
Regarding Li Mei, the world has mixed evaluations of him to this day, some people think that he is the hero who promoted the early end of World War II, and some people think that he is a "butcher" who has lost morality and destroyed humanity.
And I believe that the "Li Mei Barbecue" is the evil result of Japan's self-inflicted aggression in launching a war of aggression.
For, do not do unto others what you do not want!