Much has been written about the American and British bombing raids in Europe during World War II; the Russian reader is less aware of the actions of US bomber aircraft against Japanese cities at the end of World War II. The facts are shocking, and against their background, even the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 appears to be quite an ordinary matter, which fits well into the logic of the conduct of an air war by American aviation - right up to the present day - in the wars in Korea, Vietnam, in air strikes on Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq and Syria. Intoxicated by the unconditional success in the war with Japan, achieved without the landing of American troops on the Japanese islands proper, the Pentagon strategists wanted to make aviation the main means for achieving world domination. I, who served in the Air Defense Forces of the country for more than two decades, recalls in this regard that in the late 40s - early 50s of the last century, there were 1,500 heavy bombers in the combat composition of the US Air Force Strategic Aviation Command, which were planned to be used against our country according to the scenario that passed the initial test in the cities of Germany and Japan. With the Soviet Union, this option failed. I would like to believe that it will not work against modern Russia either.
The article is based on materials from the foreign press and M. Kaiden's book "Torch for the Enemy", published in 1992.
BEGINNING OF THE END
At exactly noon on March 10, 1945, the Japanese Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo issued the following communiqué:
“Today, March 10, shortly after midnight and before 02.40, about 130 B-29 bombers attacked Tokyo with all their might and carried out indiscriminate bombing of the city. … the bombing caused fires in various parts of the capital. The fire in the building of the headquarters of the Imperial Ministry of the Court was taken under control at 02.35, and the rest no later than 08.00.
According to far from complete information, 15 aircraft were shot down and 50 were damaged …
Japanese newspapers, in the grip of censorship, published not only this short message, but also a few more lines hinting at the unprecedented force of the blow and its consequences.
The stingy newspaper lines - no matter how hard the editors and publishers of Japanese newspapers tried - could not fully reflect the horror that gripped Tokyo after this raid of American bombers. The newspapers did not report that nearly 17 square miles of land in the city's industrial center had been severely hit, leaving only skeletons of buildings. There was no information about the number of dead, burned and maimed residents of the city. There was not a word about what ordinary Japanese learned over the next 24 hours: at least 48 thousand people died, and another 50 to 100 thousand people, possibly also dead. The newspapers were also silent about the fact that city officials, who knew the slum area better than others, believed that the final death toll - although it was impossible to say exact numbers - could be as high as a quarter of a million people.
The "Great" Tokyo earthquake of 1923 and earthquakes followed by fires caused the death of - according to official figures - about 100 thousand people. Another 43 thousand people disappeared, and of this figure at least 25 thousand were also included in the death toll. The earthquake trapped tens of thousands of people under collapsed buildings, but the resulting fire moved much more slowly than the terrifying oncoming wave of flame that rolled unhindered through Tokyo in the early morning hours of March 10, 1945. On that day, in about 6 hours, 17 square miles of Tokyo's urban area burned out and more than 100,000 of its inhabitants were killed.
The Americans went to such a deafening "success" for several years …
WAR
On August 14, 1945, the military ruler of more than half a billion people and an area of almost 3 million square miles of the planet admitted complete defeat and surrendered unconditionally to his enemy. The empire, which shortly before surrender had reached the zenith of its conquests, fell apart as a world power, although it still had millions of well-equipped and trained soldiers and thousands of combat aircraft ready for a powerful suicidal strike against the American invasion forces.
Japanese soil had not yet seen a single enemy soldier, and yet Japan surrendered. As M. Kaidan writes in his book, this happened as a result of well-coordinated efforts to increase the impact on it, for which huge industrial resources of the United States were used.
“Fully recognizing the important contributions of other branches of the armed forces, - stated the American General Henry Arnold in his report on November 12, 1945, - I believe that the contribution made by the air force can justly be called decisive …
The collapse of Japan confirmed the correctness of the entire strategic concept of the offensive phase of the war in the Pacific. Broadly and simply, this strategy was to conduct an air offensive, both land based and aircraft based, to such an extent that the full fury of a crushing air attack could be unleashed on Japan itself, with the likelihood of what an attack is. will cause the defeat of Japan without invading (it).
No invasion was required."
The Americans conditionally divide the war against Japan into three stages. The first stage is defensive, it began with Pearl Harbor and the simultaneous offensive of the Japanese in Oceania and Asia. For the United States, this was a period of despair - their troops were retreating, suffering heavy losses. Then came the battle (June 1942) at Midway Atoll, when the US Navy first retaliated and, as a result of successful attacks by dive bombers, destroyed 4 large enemy aircraft carriers. This began the "defensive-offensive period", or the period of "restraining" the Japanese from expanding their already existing conquests. The Americans began to conduct limited offensives (Guadalcanal), but their main task was to find an opportunity to arrange their manpower and military equipment in such a way that they could strike at the Japanese islands proper.
But at that time, the war in Europe was a top priority for the United States, so they could not allocate sufficient forces and means for decisive action in Asia.
By mid-1944, the outcome of the war in Europe was a foregone conclusion. It had not yet been won, but there was no doubt about its outcome. The areas of battle have been significantly reduced. The African continent was clear of the enemy. American troops were on the European continent, and the Red Army was driving the Germans from the east.
The American Very Long Range Bomber program, conceived several years ago, has begun to take shape. In Asia and Oceania, the Americans made holes in the perimeter of the Japanese defenses, captured the islands and accumulated there material resources and manpower for an offensive in Asia, and Japanese cities inevitably became the main target for the rapidly growing fleet of huge B-29 bombers.
According to Kaidan, the B-29s unleashed an incredible stream of fire on Japan. Her ability to continue the war collapsed in the ashes of scarred and burned city centers. The two atomic bombs accounted for less than 3% of the total damage to industrial centers in Japan. “But these bombs were given to the Japanese so concerned about saving face, excuse and means to end a long futile war with a touch of honor …” the author points out.
June 15, 1944 was the day that the American campaign of using long-range bombers to burn the heartland of Japan began. On this day, B-29s based in China dropped many bombs on a huge metallurgical plant in Yawata; at the same time, far south of Yavat, American marines began to land on the island of Saipan (Mariana Islands), which gave hope that the B-29 would soon have a good launching pad for massive bombing of Japan itself.
As Kaidan points out, "On that day, Japan's high command had to admit, at least for themselves, that their beautiful dream of isolating the Japanese islands had turned into a terrible nightmare."
The destruction of Japanese cities was predetermined in December 1943, when the United States decided to use a radical new weapon - very long-range bombers - against Japan.
NEW WEAPON
$ 2 billion was spent on the development of the Manhattan Project, which gave the United States an atomic bomb and was considered the most expensive event in American history. However, even before the first B-29 took off in June 1943, its development and production it was already spent or planned to spend $ 3 billion. In the strictest secrecy, the bomber was designed for more than two years.
The B-29 was the first American bomber designed for operations from high (over 9 km) altitudes; the plane had a lot of new products, in particular, pressurized flight compartments and an air heating system. However, the most impressive innovation was the centralized fire control system (CCS), which provided remote control of fire in the event of the death of one or more shooters from the aircraft's 5 firing points (12 machine guns and 1 cannon in total). It was assumed that the layout of firing points implemented on the bomber excludes the presence of "dead zones" in which the attacking enemy fighter would not be exposed to fire from the bomber's protective weapons. The efficiency of the CSSC was also increased by an electronic computer, which continuously gave data on the speed of the attacking enemy fighters and the range to them, and also determined corrections for gravity, wind, air temperature and the flight altitude of the bomber itself.
To assess the effectiveness of the CSSC, let's say that in the first 6 months of the B-29's combat use (from China), Japanese fighters destroyed only 15 bombers, while losing 102 of their aircraft as “probably destroyed”, another 87 as “likely destroyed” and 156 as "Seriously damaged".
Fully loaded, the bomber weighed 135,000 pounds (61,235 kg), of which 20,000 pounds (9,072 kg) was carried by 40 bombs with a caliber of 500 pounds (227 kg).
TESTING NEW WEAPONS
Initially, the American military command planned to use the B-29 centrally, as a single mobile force, since it seemed uneconomical to keep all bombers in one theater of operations. Most of all, the fact that the B-29, due to its weight and size, could only operate from reinforced runways, worked against this concept.
Initially, construction of four new airfields for bombers and three airfields for fighters began in order to bring the B-29 as close as possible to targets on the Japanese islands in the Chengdu region (China); several hundred thousand Chinese workers were involved in the construction.
By June 1944, the B-29s were ready for their combat debut in Asia. On June 5, 1944, 98 bombers from bases in India flew into a raid on Siam (Thailand), where 77 aircraft were able to drop their bombs on targets, of which only 48 bombers hit their targets. 10 days later, on June 15, 75 B-29 aircraft attacked the metallurgical plant in Yamata, of which only 45 bombers dropped bombs, none of which hit the target.
In two raids, the Americans lost 9 aircraft - without opposition from the enemy, and the raids had rather a psychological effect - positive for the Americans and negative for their enemy.
Generally speaking, in nine months of hostilities from the territory of China, B-29 bombers, consolidated into the XX Bomber Command, made 49 raids (3058 sorties) and dropped 11 477 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the enemy. Targets on the territory of Japan proper were subject to minimal impact from the American aviation, therefore the Matterhorn project, which envisaged an attack on the Japanese islands from bases in mainland Asia, was curtailed, and the actions of the XX Bomber Command were deemed a "failure."
ON THE MARIAN ISLANDS
In the chronicle of the war with Japan, the date June 15, 1944, which was mentioned above, is notable not only for the bombing of the Yawata metallurgical plant, but also for the fact that on this day the American marines began landing on the island of Saipan (Mariana Islands), which was defended by several tens of thousands of soldiers. Emperor, and within a month, breaking the organized resistance of the Japanese, took him under their control. Soon, the Americans fought to capture two more of the largest southern islands in the Mariana Islands - Tinian and Guam.
Saipan has an area of about 75 square miles and is about 800 miles closer to Tokyo than from Chengdu, located in mainland China, from which B-29s operated from airfields. Several months of hard work on the construction of airfields, and already on November 24, 1944, 100 B-29s left Saipan for the first raid on Tokyo with high-explosive and incendiary bombs. Bombing with the use of airborne radars was carried out from high altitudes, but the result of this and most of the raids that followed left much to be desired. So, on March 4, 1945, the eighth B-29 raid on the Masashino plant in Tokyo took place, which withstood all previous raids by both bombers and carrier-based aircraft, and continued to work. 192 B-29s took part in the eighth raid, but the damage to the plant was "a little more serious than a scratch." The target area was completely covered by clouds, and the B-29s dropped bombs on the radar, unable to observe the results, and as a result - a complete failure of the raid. The reasons for this failure, like the campaign as a whole, should be sought primarily in the accuracy of the bombing of the B-29 crews, which was officially characterized as "deplorable" and was considered the weakest link in the campaign; another reason for failures was the “shocking” percentage of aircraft that interrupted their flight for various reasons and returned to the departure aerodrome (up to 21% of the number of aircraft that took off for the raid); finally, there was a large number of aircraft that, for various reasons, landed on the water and were lost, conceived together with the crews.
Major General Le May, who headed the XXI Bomber Command (Mariana Islands) since January 20, 1945, carefully analyzed the results of the bombers' raids and made fundamental conclusions. “I may have been wrong,” the general said about the 334 B-29 bombers subordinate to him, based on Saipan, Tinian and Guam, “but after studying the photographic data, I thought that Japan was poorly prepared to repel night raids from low altitudes. … She lacked radar and anti-aircraft artillery. If it had happened in the skies over Germany, then we would have failed, since the German air defense was too strong. And for complete success in Japan, it was necessary to have a sufficient bomb load on the planes to "saturate" the bombing area. I had sufficient striking power, since I had three bombing wings."
Le May's decision was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that, unlike Europe, where city buildings and factory buildings were made of durable materials, in Japanese cities, 90% of residential buildings and factory buildings were made of flammable materials.
On the morning of March 9, 1945, in the pre-flight briefing rooms of the XXI Bomber Command, after the assignment of missions to the crews, an unexpected silence fell - the pilots began to realize what they had just heard:
- a series of powerful nighttime incendiary bombs will strike the main industrial cities of Japan;
- bombing will be carried out from heights in the range of 5000-8000 feet (1524-2438 m);
- there will be no defensive weapons and ammunition on the aircraft, with the exception of firing points in the tail of the aircraft; in subsequent raids, they will also be dismantled; crews will fly in reduced composition;
- there will be no battle formations for flight to the target, its attack and return to the departure base; planes will operate individually;
- the first target will be Tokyo - a city known for its strong air defense.
According to Le Mey's plan, the main group's raid was to be preceded by the actions of guidance aircraft, which would indicate the aiming points for attack aircraft.
The crews were also instructed on how to behave if they are knocked down and they find themselves on the ground: "… hurry up to surrender to the military, because civilians will beat you on the spot … during interrogations, never call the Japanese Japs, this is certain death …".
By the end of the day on March 9, 1945, targeting aircraft (each carrying 180 napalm bombs weighing 70 pounds; the fuses of these bombs were exposed to a height of 100 feet, where they detonated and threw a combustible mixture in different directions, which ignited everything in sight on the way) were over the target and laid out the letter "X" with napalm bombs. The crosshairs "X" became the aiming point for the B-29s of the main group, which, starting at a quarter of an hour after midnight on March 10, 1945, began to bomb the city. Time meters on the bombers were set to drop magnesium bombs every 50 feet (15.24 m) of the way - in this situation, each square mile of area in the target area "received" a minimum of 8333 incendiary bombs with a total weight of 25 tons.
A few miles from the attacked area was the home of a member of the Swedish diplomatic mission, who described the impressions of the raid in the following way: “The bombers looked great, they changed colors like chameleons … the planes looked greenish when caught in the beams of searchlights, or red when they flew over the conflagration … White buildings from brick and stone they burned with a bright flame, and the fire of wooden buildings gave a yellowish flame. A giant wave of smoke hung over the Tokyo Bay."
The residents of Tokyo, trapped in a fiery trap, had no time for beauties and figurative comparisons. As the head of the city's fire service reported later, "at 00.45, half an hour after the start of the bombing, the situation completely got out of control and we were completely helpless …"
Prior to this raid, the Japanese did not even suspect that 8 tons of incendiary bombs dropped from one B-29 in a matter of minutes turn an area of 600 by 2000 feet (183-609 m) into a blazing hell, from which it is impossible to get out. German Hamburg, which fell in July 1943 under a massive bombing of British aircraft, became the first city in history to be swept by a firestorm. Tokyo inherited the sad fame of the first city in the world, in which a fiery hurricane raged, in which the primary tongues of flame from the dropped incendiary bombs stuck into the houses of the Japanese who were on fire and almost instantly were carried up and to the sides. The rate of spread of the fire was incredible, like a violent fire of dry trees in a large forest; the fire itself literally exploded as the fire advanced. Small fires combined into huge glowing spheres, as if animate, these spheres jumped from one building to another, covering a distance of several hundred feet at a time and causing a powerful outbreak in the victim in his path, which immediately turned a city block or even several blocks to the underworld.
Driven by the wind, whose speed at the ground reached 28 miles per hour, the fire spread rapidly, absorbing new fires that had begun and volumes of incandescent heat from tens of thousands of magnesium bombs; the fire became a pillar of fire, then took the form of a wall of fire, galloping on the burning roofs of buildings, then, under the strong pressure of the wind, the wall bent and began to lean towards the earth, absorbing the oxygen-saturated surface layer and increasing the combustion temperature. That night in Tokyo, it reached the fantastic 1800 degrees Fahrenheit (982.2 degrees Celsius).
Due to the low altitude of the bombing, the B-29's cockpits were not pressurized - there was no need for the pilots to wear oxygen masks. As Kaidan testifies, “gases from the fire raging below began to penetrate into the bombers above the city, and the cockpits began to fill with a strange veil that had a blood-red hue. The pilots could not bear what was brought into the cockpit along with the veil, they choked, coughs and vomited, they grabbed their masks to greedily swallow pure oxygen … Military pilots could endure anything, but not the all-pervading stench from burning of human flesh, which filled the air over the city lying in agony to a height of two miles …"
According to official Japanese figures, more than 130,000 people died that day; thousands of them died in terrible agony, being cooked - people sought salvation from the fire in city water bodies, but they boiled when incendiary bombs hit them.
On March 12, 1945, it was the turn of the city of Nagoya, a more modern city with refractory buildings and some of the best firefighters in the country. The raid involved 286 B-29s, which burned down only 1.56 square miles of the city area, but there were important industrial facilities. On March 14, 2,240 tons of bombs were dropped on Osaka, the center of heavy industry and the country's third largest port; in the city, everything (including the largest factories) in an area of 9 square miles was burned out or completely destroyed. On March 17, Kobe, a major road and rail junction and center of shipbuilding, was bombed, 2300 tons of bombs were dropped on it. The final blow in this blitzkrieg was the repeated raid on Nagoya (2000 tons of bombs).
Thus, in five raids, B-29s burned more than 29 square miles of territory in the largest industrial centers of Japan, dropping 10,100 tons of bombs on them. Losses in bombers from Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft artillery were only 1.3% of the aircraft over the target (in later raids they fell to 0.3% altogether).
After a short respite, the Americans resumed their raids, and Tokyo turned into a city of absolute terror - on the night of April 13, 1945, 327 B-29 bombs fell on it, and 36 hours later, three B-29 wings again bombed Tokyo. On May 24, 1945, 520 bombers dropped over 3600 tons of bombs on the city; Two days later, when the fires from the previous raid had not yet burned out, another 3252 tons of M-77 bombs were dropped on Tokyo, which were a combination of a powerful high-explosive charge and a combustible mixture. After this raid, the city was struck off the target list (a total of 11,836 tons of bombs were dropped on the city). A little more than 3 million inhabitants remained in Tokyo, the rest left the city.
Avalanches of high-explosive and incendiary bombs rained down on Nagoya - "a city that did not catch fire." Nagoya has not experienced fires as strong as Tokyo, but after the fourth raid with the use of incendiary bombs (and before that there were also 9 high-explosive bombings), Nagoya was struck off the list of targets.
A skating rink of fire was crushing Japan. On May 29, 1945, the huge port of Yokohama was struck off the target list after just one raid, in which 459 B-29s dropped 2,769 tons of bombs on the city and burned out 85% of its area. Osaka, the country's second largest city, was hit in a series of strikes after 6,110 tons of bombs were dropped on it. The Japanese authorities announced that 53% of the city had been destroyed and that more than 2 million of its inhabitants had fled.
By mid-June 1945, the second phase of the incendiary bomb campaign had reached its goal - there was nothing more to bomb in the five largest industrial cities in Japan; of their total urban area of 446 square miles in an area of 102 square miles, where vital businesses were located, there was total destruction.
The only major city that escaped the bombing was Kyoto (the 5th largest in the country), a well-known religious center.
From June 17, 1945, incendiary raids began to be carried out against cities with a population of 100 to 350 thousand people; after a month of bombing, 23 of these cities were struck off the target list.
From July 12, 1945, the last group of targets began to be attacked - cities with a population of less than 100 thousand people.
By the time the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, B-29 raids with incendiary bombs had burned down an area of 178 square miles in 69 cities in Japan (atomic bombings increased this figure by another 3%), and were directly affected by the bombing more than 21 million people.
As General Le Mey later put it, "six months more, and we would have bombed the Japanese in the early Middle Ages …"
In less than half a year, counting from March 10, 1945, of the incendiary bombing, casualties in the civilian population of Japan more than doubled Japan's military losses in 45 months of the war with the United States.
