#Today, in history# The most powerful non-nuclear bombardment in human history - the Great Bombing of Tokyo!
On the night of March 9, 1945, Major General Curtis LeMay, commander of the U.S. 21st Bomber Force, ordered 334 B-29s to sail from Guam in the Mariana Islands to Tokyo.
In order to increase the bombing power, Li May even ordered the removal of all gun turrets and ammunition on the bomber, leaving only the machine gunner in the tail of the aircraft to reduce the weight of the B-29 and carry more incendiary bombs.
The bombers that took off that day each carried six to eight tons of incendiary bombs, burning an area of up to 6,500 square meters.
At 00:15 on March 10, two navigation planes arrived over Tokyo and dropped flares on the Shitamachi area of the intended target area, and then dropped incendiary bombs to indicate targets for subsequent aircraft.
A large number of bombers then flew into the target area in turn, dropping incendiary bombs, and the fire spread rapidly. The bombing lasted two hours and dropped more than 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs.
The scorching waves of air formed by the fire caused by the bombing formed strong convective winds with cold air, creating a firestorm. The resulting high temperature of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius makes the river burn dry, and the human body burns into char...
The bombing burned nearly 41 square kilometers of buildings east of the Imperial Palace, about a quarter of Tokyo's area. Of these, 18% are industrial areas, 63% are commercial areas, and the rest are residential areas.
All 22 industrial targets in the bombing plan were destroyed, more than 267,000 buildings were burned, 83,793 people were burned to death, 100,000 were seriously injured and 1 million were left homeless. After the fire, it took the Japanese government 25 days to clean up the charred bodies.
Yoshitaka Kimura, a survivor of the bombing of Tokyo, recalled: Countless bombs fell from the air like rain, and in an instant, they exploded like fireworks. And these explosive "fireworks" quickly set houses and land on fire, and Kimura watched the familiar land turn into a sea of fire...
Nine U.S. B-29s were shot down, five were seriously wounded and forced to land at sea, and 42 were wounded but returned safely to base with the rest of the bombers.
