Tinian, Mariana Islands • December 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 86 4-engine B‑29 Superfortresses belonging to XXI Bomber Command, a unit of the U.S. Twentieth Air Force, left the northwestern Pacific Mariana Islands base on Tinian on their third Tokyo bombing mission. Ten days earlier 111 of these 4‑engine heavy bombers had launched the…
Seattle, Washington State • September 21, 1942 On this date Boeing’s largest-to-date, 4‑engine heavy bomber lifted off on its maiden flight from its namesake’s airfield in Seattle, Washington. Three years earlier the forerunner of the U.S. Army Air Forces had expressed its interest in a replacement bomber for the company’s first 4‑engine heavy bomber, the…
Rouen, Normandy, Occupied France • August 17, 1942 On July 4, 1942, a dozen Douglas A-20 Havoc medium bombers took off from a small, grassy airstrip in Norfolk, about 100 miles/161 km northeast of London, England, and headed for Nazi-occupied Holland. Half the bombers were American, part of the U.S. Army Air Force’s Eighth Air Force 15th…
London, England • June 10, 1943 On this date in 1943 U.S. and British air forces unleashed their Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) against industrial targets valuable to Nazi Germany’s war machine, particularly to the Luftwaffe. The CBO had several antecedents. In late 1942 both the British and the Americans had identified “bottleneck” German industries (Great…
Between the grinding battles of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa and the finality of the atomic bomb strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. Air Force conducted a bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands that escalated to new levels of destruction.
Burning Japan is an investigation of how and why the air force shifted its tactics against Japan from a precision bombing strategy to area attacks. The guiding doctrine of the 1930s and 1940s called for focused attacks on specific targets deep behind enemy lines. Eager to prove itself, the nascent Army Air Force at first lauded the indispensability of strategic bombardment in areas otherwise unreachable by the army or navy. But when strategic bombing failed to yield the desired results in Europe and in initial efforts against Japan, the United States switched tactics, a shift that culminated in the area firebombing of nearly every major Japanese metropolis and the burning of sixty-six cities to the ground.
Daniel T. Schwabe closely examines the planning and implementation of these incendiary missions to determine how an organization dedicated to precision decided on such a dramatic change in tactics. Ultimately, Schwabe maintains, this strategic reimagining helped create a comprehensive offensive strategy that did immense amounts of destruction which crippled Japan and brought an end to World War II.
Tinian, Mariana Islands · December 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 eighty-six 4-engine B‑29 Superfortresses belonging to XXI Bomber Command, a unit of the U.S. Twentieth Air Force, left the northwestern Pacific Mariana Islands base on Tinian on their third Tokyo bombing mission. Ten days earlier 111 of these heavy bombers had launched the first raid…
Tinian, Mariana Islands · December 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 eighty-six B‑29 Superfortresses belonging to XXI Bomber Command, a unit of the U.S. Twentieth Air Force, left the northwestern Pacific Mariana Islands base on Tinian on their third Tokyo bombing mission. Ten days earlier 111 of these heavy bombers had launched the first raid on…