On the night of March 9, 1945, the lights of Tokyo were dark, most of the Tokyo citizens had fallen asleep, but what they could not dream of was that their Tokyo was about to be destroyed, the entire sky over Tokyo Bay had long been covered by a huge buzz, and the huge noise was made by 334 American B-29 bombers, when the needle stepped past zero, the first few B-29s flying in the front suddenly swooped down, at 0:07, the first incendiary bomb fell from a low altitude, and the dark Tokyo was instantly illuminated by fire. It also indicated bomb targets for subsequent B-29 fleets. Countless Tokyo citizens ran back and forth between the inside and outside of the house that night, but no matter where they hid, the flames always found their place precisely, and in the flames and screams of the sky, they could even see the faces of the American pilots who were circling low altitudes with bombers, while they were preparing for the next wave of bombing, this time they planned to drop 1800 tons of incendiary bombs to completely burn Tokyo clean. This was the most tragic indiscriminate bombing in the Far East during World War II, and it was also a classic in the history of strategic bombing, which was immediately recorded in history after the bombing and its casualties, known as the "Tokyo Bombing".
In 1917, the Italian military theorist Giulio Duhe put forward a clear and complete theory of strategic bombing, he advocated that the best way in war is to take the lead in seizing air supremacy, and then rely on high-altitude combat weapons to destroy the enemy's vital parts, including the enemy's supply source and the people's will to resist, so that the enemy will surrender due to the destruction of industrial potential. This theory in World War I played a great role in promoting the construction of air forces in various countries in the world, but it was limited by the level of science and technology at that time, and it was not until World War II that this theory really exerted its value, and the person who directly raised Duhei's theory to the "art" level was the "barbecue master" Curtis Limei of the United States.
"Barbecue Master" Curtis Limei
In the early morning of December 7, 1941, a Japanese naval fleet consisting of six aircraft carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, nine destroyers and three submarines secretly sailed out of Japanese harbor under the command of Vice Admiral Junichi Minamimoto, and attacked Pearl Harbor, an important military base of the United States in the Pacific.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
Since April 1942, the U.S. military has continued to try to carry out the same bombing of the Japanese mainland, and formulated a series of bombing plans such as the "Doolittle Air Raid", the U.S. B-25 medium bomber has visited Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe and other places in Japan countless times, although each U.S. military sortie can cause a certain degree of damage to Japan, making the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, General Yamamoto Fifty-six, panic for the rest of his life, but unfortunately, due to technical reasons, The U.S. military did not have an absolute upper hand in the confrontation with the Japanese Navy, so it did not have the conditions to bomb Tokyo strategically from the air until September 21, 1942, when the B-29 bomber known as the "Super Fortress" came out, and the United States put the bombing of Tokyo on the agenda.
Group photo before the doolittle air raid on Tokyo
B-29 bomber using 4 propeller engines, the maximum speed of 574 kilometers per hour, the maximum cruising speed of 550 kilometers per hour, the practical ceiling of 10241 meters, the combat radius of nearly 3000 kilometers, the length of 30 meters, the wingspan of 40 meters, the maximum capacity of the magazine more than 9 tons, from the paper data, the B-29 bomber has been close to some standards of modern strategic bombers, the aircraft that can fly at a height of 10,000 meters at that time are very few, even if some aircraft can climb to the same height as the B-29. However, in terms of speed, it still cannot match the B-29, which greatly increases the safety of the B-29 and makes it more relaxed when carrying out bombing missions.
U.S. Air Force B29 bombers drop bombs
However, even with more high-tech B-29 bombers, the U.S. bombing of Tokyo was still not so smooth, on November 24, 1944, the U.S. military sent 88 B-29 bombers from the Mariana Islands to fly over Tokyo to carry out a daytime precision bombing, the result was that half of the bombers at a height of 10,000 meters could not find the bombing target, and only about 10% of the bombs dropped by the bombers who found the target hit the intended target. This can only be regarded as a minor injury to Japan, which has long been accustomed to US air raids, and it cannot hurt its roots at all.
The reason for the failure of the bombing plan for Tokyo was not the blind confidence of the US military in the B-29 bomber, but because Japan was an island country, the clouds were too dense, the pilots were extremely susceptible to cloud interference when performing their missions at high altitudes and could not accurately locate the target, in addition, at a height of 10,000 meters, the wind speed reached 200 mph, which seriously affected the accuracy of the bombing, and soon a major of the US military discovered these problems, and the major was Curtis LiMei, who was later recorded in history.
B-29 bombers performing aerial bombing
In January 1945, Li Mei, who was on a bombing mission against Germany, was transferred to the Pacific Theater to command the Twentieth Bomber Wing in the China-Burma-India region, and at first Li Mei also adopted the strategy of day bombing, but after 16 daytime bombs against the Japanese mainland and dropped 5 tons of bombs, Japan not only suffered minimal damage, but also caused heavy losses to the Twentieth Bomber Wing, and the Japanese army relied on air fighters and anti-aircraft guns to shoot down 29 B-29 bombers. Li Mei was devastated by the fact that 21 American bombers had failed due to attack, and he was constantly looking for strategies to overcome this problem, and finally came up with a countermeasure in March 1945: to bomb Tokyo, Japan at night with incendiary bombs.
The B-29 bomber group is flying over Tokyo
Li Mei came up with such a countermeasure after careful consideration, when Japan lacked night fighters and artillery radar, which provided security for the night operation of the US military, as long as the Japanese ground artillery attack was evaded, the bombing success rate would be greatly increased, in addition, although Japan in 1945 had entered the Showa era, it still retained the brand of the Edo period, and the Japanese wooden buildings connected to Tokyo were one of them, and this provided favorable conditions for bombing, as long as these wooden buildings were ignited. The whole city will burn.
Tokyo is a patch of Japanese-style wooden buildings connected to each other
In order to improve the success rate of this bombing operation, Before entering the skies over Tokyo Bay, Li Mei made many adjustments to the bomber, including doubling the bomb load of 334 B-29 bombers, in order to achieve this goal, he ordered the removal of all cannons and their ammunition on the bomber, and limited the amount of fuel, so that the lethality of the single aircraft would be greatly increased, and at the same time, according to the previous experience of bombing the Japanese residential area of Hankou in China, as well as the characteristics of Japanese wooden buildings, he changed all the explosive bombs carried by the bomber to cluster incendiary bombs. It is supplemented by low- and medium-altitude dive bombing tactics to improve the accuracy of throwing. Although the pilots were deeply surprised by the changes proposed by Li Mei, the facts proved that Li Mei's judgment was correct.
Li Mei ordered the removal of the bomber cannon and its ammunition
On the afternoon of March 9, 1945, 334 B-29 bombers set off from the Guam base and directly attacked Tokyo, each aircraft carried six to eight tons of incendiary bombs, with a total burning area of up to 6500 square meters, at 00:00 on March 10, the B-29 bomb group arrived over Tokyo as planned, at 0:07, as the first incendiary bomb fell, the subsequent incendiary bombs poured down like raindrops, although after learning the news of the bombing, the Japanese anti-aircraft artillery fire opened the defensive mode as soon as possible. However, as Li Mei estimated, due to the lack of artillery aiming radar, anti-aircraft guns can only shoot blindly at the sky at night, and the shooting accuracy is greatly reduced, and the BOMBers of the US military can pour incendiary bombs over Tokyo like no man's land.
U.S. bombers that indiscriminately dump bombs
That night, the Japanese capital Tokyo appeared an unprecedented "fire whirlwind", the US bombers in the city of Tokyo with incendiary bombs to burn a big fire cross, follow-up bombers will use this fire cross as a landmark to their respective throwing targets to frantically throw incendiary bombs, the flames quickly spread to all corners, the entire city of Tokyo is in flames, like a huge furnace, 334 B-29 bombers have thrown more than 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs to Tokyo, equivalent to about 451,200 incendiary bombs. Because these incendiary bombs are all improved napalm, falling on The wooden buildings of Japan can not be extinguished for a long time, so that the temperature of Tokyo has risen sharply, and the temperature of the burning center has even exceeded 1,000 degrees, so that the high temperature not only burns all the people and things in the area, but even the metal lampposts and tram tracks are also melted, and the US pilots who are performing bombing missions at low altitude also feel a little unbearable, but despite this, they are still very excited. Because this was the opportunity they had been hoping to shed the shame of Pearl Harbor, listening to the cries and howls of the Japanese people from below, they felt even more blood boiling.
The U.S. military bombed the port of Hokkaido, and the city was burned with thick smoke under the bombardment
Although Tokyo was engulfed in thousands of tons of incendiary bombs in a few hours, but the US military offensive did not end because of this, in the next 10 days, the US military bombed Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka and other cities in succession, almost exhausted the long-stored 100,000 tons of incendiary bombs, the Japanese proud of the Meiji Jingu Shrine also disappeared in this bombing, and compared to the bombing, the most frightening thing for the Japanese is Li Mei's leaflets, when bombing Japanese cities, Li Mei will drop tens of thousands of warning leaflets at the same time. Inform the Japanese of the next bombing targets, although they already know that their cities will be burned down, the Japanese can only wait quietly for their arrival.
A U.S. plane skimmed over the city of Naha in Okinawa, and japanese anti-aircraft guns on the ground began to attack
The clean-up work after the fire took 25 days, after statistics, about 100,000 Japanese died in Tokyo, a quarter of the area was razed to the ground, the fire wave caused by incendiary bombs burned 22 of Japan's vital industrial plants, more than 260,000 buildings were burned in flames, 98 cities in Japan were visited by US bombers, millions of people were homeless after the fire, and mutilated and incomplete corpses were everywhere in Japan, and the disgusting stench was still unable to completely dissipate for dozens of days The success of this bombing operation greatly damaged the morale of the Japanese people, causing the Japanese government to seriously consider whether to accept the Potsdam Proclamation, which objectively accelerated the demise of fascism to a certain extent.
Japan surrendered
On June 8, 1954, Japan gave the United Nations a big gift, called the "Peace Bell", according to Japan, this bell is minted from 60 Japanese children collected coins, implying that the world must love peace, do not forget the harm caused by the war, but in fact, the Japanese are implying that the war should not involve innocent civilians, referring to the bombing of Tokyo and the subsequent two explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to bring pain to the Japanese, in order to win the sympathy of the world. The purpose was to tell the world that even an aggressor should be sympathized with, and in this way, Japan cleverly turned itself into a victim, a sympathetic party, however, as U.S. Air Force Colonel Paul Tibbetts said: "Many Japanese people think that I will be condemned by conscience after dropping the bomb, because I have lost their lives, but I don't think so, I have personally seen the Nanjing Massacre documentary, the method is extremely cruel, the Japanese only think of themselves being bombed, but did not think about why they were bombed."