As one of the greatest catastrophes in human history, World War II is still fresh in the memory of many people, and the cruelty of the war is too unforgettable. As one of the initiators of World War II, Japan also suffered its own evil consequences in World War II, and was bombed by two atomic bombs by the United States. But the most memorable thing for Japan should be the "Tokyo Bombing" that occurred over Tokyo, the capital of Japan.
The river was boiled and the steel bars melted, a real scene from an air raid that far exceeded the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
Have you ever seen apocalyptic scenes of 160,000 tons of bombs and more than 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs pouring down?
The U.S. Far East Air Force dispatched more than 30,000 warplanes and dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs on an Asian country in just nine months.
The destruction of ninety-eight cities in the country directly caused more than half a million casualties.
What is the deep hatred between the United States and this Asian country? Why carry out such crazy revenge? What was the impact of this bombing operation?
After the fall of France in 1940, a German-backed puppet government allowed Japanese troops to enter French Indochina. Japan's proximity to U.S. colonies in Southeast Asia is undoubtedly a provocation to U.S. interests.
As a result, the United States, which was tightly entrenched in the Pacific, cut off oil shipments to Japan. In order to get rid of U.S. sanctions and plunder resources,
Japan had plans to go south. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese mixed fleet crossed the Pacific Ocean and raided the American military base at Pearl Harbor, and the American troops who rushed to battle suffered heavy losses, one hundred and eighty-eight aircraft were destroyed, and thousands of officers and soldiers were killed or wounded.
The entire Pacific Fleet was completely paralyzed. The news of the success of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor shocked the world.
The next day, Roosevelt, then president of the United States, delivered a speech announcing the formal involvement of the United States in World War II.
In April 1942, the United States dispatched sixteen B25 bombers to raid Tokyo, Yokohama and other places in Japan, but the scope of damage was limited.
However, it effectively boosted the morale of the US military and also caused psychological pressure on Japan.
Fearing that the U.S. forces would strike again, the Japanese dispatched a large number of fleets back to their homeland. Therefore, in the Pacific Theater, the pressure of war between the United States and Britain was relieved. In fact, for a long time, because of the defects in the mobility of the B25, the United States did not have the conditions to carry out bombing missions on a large scale, until the advent of the new American bomber B29, the US military had the strength to carry out substantive bombing against Japan.
Nicknamed The Fortress in the Air, the B29 strategic bomber represented the highest level of bombers at the time, and it was difficult for Axis bombers to reach this level, and even if they could, it was difficult to mass-produce. What is even more frightening to the Japanese is that the United States, like the war machine, will soon be able to mass-produce after the successful introduction of the B29.
On June 15, 1944, roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek jointly agreed that U.S. aircraft would depart from Chengdu, China, and then carry out a surprise bombing raid on Japan. The U.S. military dispatched sixty-eight B-29 strategic bombers to bomb the Yakuban Iron and Steel Works on the Japanese island of Kyushu. But due to range limitations, the bombers could only carry two tons of bombs and did not cause much damage.
In this conference room, Li Mei, a high-ranking US military officer, was secretly formulating a bombing plan to target Tokyo, Japan, named "Fire Bull" Operation, the specific strategic bombing time was set at 10 o'clock in the morning of March 10, 1945, and it was still the B29, which participated in the operation this time, and the Japanese at this time did not know what would greet them, let alone that the name Li Mei would be engraved in Japan's humiliating history and become their nightmare for decades.
Li Mei, who was successfully promoted to major general at the age of thirty-seven, is undoubtedly the best pilot in the US army. Through many observations, Li Mei has obtained an important message, that is, most of Japan's urban structure is wooden buildings, which means that the US military's favorite high-explosive bombs have no great effect on Japan. But wooden buildings have a fatal drawback, that is, they are extremely easy to burn. If all the high-explosive bombs are replaced by incendiary bombs, the bombing effect will be multiplied with half the effort.
After the plan was drawn up, the operational order was reached to each air force wing. At this military base, all the preparations were intensely underway, and the maintenance crews were conducting a final inspection of the planes filled with explosives. Repairs of more than six hundred B29 fighter jets are poised to take off, their target is Tokyo, Japan, on March 9, 1945 at 15:40 p.m., the 73rd Wing of the 58th Wing of the 314th Wing of the US 314th Wing, the 73rd Wing of the 313th Wing, flew the B29 fighters one after another, this time, the fate of Tokyo, Japan will be rewritten forever.
At first, the BOMB mission of the US Air Force was not smooth, because of climatic factors, it was difficult for the US Air Force to detect bombing targets at an altitude of 10,000 meters above the Japanese mainland. Li Mei first dispatched eighty-eight fighters, but in the end only thirty aircraft could successfully find the target of the bombing, and the hit rate was only ten percent.
Li Mei quickly made strategic adjustments according to the actual situation. On February 24, Li Mei again sent more than 200 planes to Tokyo. This time the bombing destroyed more than 20,000 buildings in Japan, and the bombing effect was very remarkable. Late on the night of March 9, three hundred and thirty-four B29 bombers stormed Tokyo from Guam, carrying out carpet bombing in turn and dropping more than two thousand tons of incendiary bombs.
Marked by the center of Tokyo, the bombing area gradually expanded to the surrounding area. The Japanese army was accustomed to the White Sky Attack of the American Army, so it was defenseless against this night attack. More than 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs were poured into Tokyo, and Tokyo suddenly became a sea of fire. The raging fire directly destroyed all the combustible materials in the city, and even led to the appearance of a fire whirlwind, the surface temperature was as high as more than a thousand degrees Celsius, the high temperature steamed all life, and even the metal was melted. People rushed to the pool, but the terrible heat turned into boiling food, and the residents covered with flames ran in pain, gradually turning into black charcoal, shells and flames dancing together, and tens of thousands of Japanese residents were burned to death in nightmares. In the Pacific Ocean, two hundred and fifty kilometers away, you can still see the soaring fire and smoke.
This was one of the worst air raids in human history, the famous Bombing of Tokyo. The bombing operation was successfully concluded,
All U.S. fighter jets assembled and headed to the nearest supply point. Although the fighters had run out of fuel, the morale of the Americans had soared, and they excitedly flew the fighter jets to celebrate the victory. When the last B29 landed on the base, it was announced that the U.S. military had completed its revenge for Pearl Harbor.
This time the bombing nearly destroyed Japan's combat capabilities. According to statistics, this bombing caused a quarter of Tokyo to be razed to the ground.
Twenty-two Tokyo arsenals were completely destroyed, about 300,000 buildings were blown up, more than 100,000 people were killed, more than 300,000 people were injured, and more than a million people were left homeless. It took the Japanese government twenty-five days to clean up the bodies left behind after the bombing.
Less than thirty hours after the fire on Tokyo, the heat wave in Tokyo had not subsided, and 317 B29 bombers once again attacked Nagoya at night, turning the city's aircraft factory into a sea of fire.
Two days later, Osaka, Japan, was also bombed by three hundred B29s, where the U.S. military dropped 1,700 tons of incendiary bombs.
More than 20 square kilometers of the city of Osaka were burned.
Three days later, the U.S. military bombed the Kobe Shipbuilding Center again, until July 4, 1945, when the U.S. military announced that it had dropped 100,000 tons of bombs on Japan, and the Japanese residents were scattered in panic and fled for their lives, which led to a violent upheaval in the foundations of Japanese industry.
In August 1945, the U.S. military flew a B29 to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the death toll was still less than the death toll on the day of the Bombing of Tokyo. The bombing of Tokyo was far more intense than the sum of the bombings of history. With the fall of the two atomic bombs, Japan no longer had the energy to provoke war, and the domestic anti-war call became louder and louder, and finally on August 15, Japan announced its unconditional surrender.
The bombing caused a huge moral debate in the world, the Japanese government believed that the US military's actions were contrary to human nature, and the US military did not care about Japan's accusations. Paul Tibbez, the American pilot who dropped the little boy, said in his last public statement,
I have never regretted dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, war is indeed immoral, and my mission is to save more people.
I never took the initiative to provoke a war, I did this to end the war, although Japan suffered heavy losses, but because Japan had previously launched a Sichuan-Chongqing bombing against China, it was difficult to stand on the moral high ground, so in the end it could only be stopped.