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By Root 1028 0

March, B-29s went to Nagoya, Japan’s third-largest city. Here, damage was much reduced by lack of a wind such as fanned the fires of Tokyo. Only two square miles of the city burned. On the thirteenth, Osaka was much more successfully attacked. Three thousand died, eight square miles of buildings were destroyed, half a million people were made homeless, for the loss of two American aircraft and thirteen damaged. On 16 March it was the turn of Kobe, population one million. Three square miles were destroyed, 8,000 people killed, 650,000 made homeless. Three bombers were lost and eleven damaged, all as a result of operational problems rather than enemy action.

After five such missions in a fortnight, a temporary halt to “burn jobs” became necessary. Air and ground crews were exhausted, supplies of incendiaries were running low. Yet the spirits of LeMay’s command soared. In just five operations they had inflicted upon Japan eight times the damage done to San Francisco by the great 1906 earthquake. The enemy’s cities had suffered in a few short days a scale of destruction which it had taken years to achieve in Germany, because Japanese buildings burned so much more readily. With the benefit of reports from its staff in Tokyo, Soviet naval intelligence reported: “Frequent bombings, particularly night attacks, have made a major impact576 on Japanese civilian morale. Exhaustion, sleeplessness and general strain have resulted in large-scale absenteeism which is affecting Japanese war production and causing acute anxiety in Japan’s ruling circles.”

The vulnerability of Japanese air defences had been laid bare. They lacked good anti-aircraft guns—on 9 March, flak accounted for just three American aircraft. Their radar sets were based on captured 1941-vintage U.S. and British technology, and were highly vulnerable to jamming. Their fighter pilots were poorly trained and ill-equipped either to locate bombers or to destroy them. Pursuing B-29s was a nightmare mission for Japanese fliers. Even those who knew their business found high-altitude engagement with the huge aircraft a gruelling experience. Ten minutes after taking off from the summer heat of Kyushu, Kunio Iwashita noticed ice forming around his oxygen mask. The Zero’s machine guns were almost useless against the Superfortress. Iwashita himself scored just one success, on 29 April—a date he always remembered, because it was his wedding anniversary. After making no impression on his American victim with guns, he took up position some three hundred yards behind and just above it, then launched a guided bomb, which exploded beside the American’s wing. The Japanese pilot followed the spinning wreck all the way down to the sea.

Again and again in the course of the Superfortress campaign, American aircrew expressed bewilderment at the poor showing of Japanese fliers, which seemed to accord so little with the enemy’s general conduct in the last months of the war. “It was easy to see that the Nip pilots577 were plenty scared of us,” wrote a U.S. flier as early as January 1945, “for out of thirty fighters spotted only ten attacked.” Weather caused far greater difficulties for the B-29s than anything the enemy did. Japanese defences accounted for an average of just two American aircraft per attack. When American POW Mel Rosen saw the first bombers over his camp, “they looked like they were on a Sunday ride.” “B-nijuuku! B-nijuuku!”—“B-29! B-29!”—cried the Japanese guards in anger, fear and bewilderment.

The B-29s’ technical problems were progressively solved, aided by the dramatic diminution of engine strain at the lower operating altitudes mandated by LeMay. Propellers bit more effectively into the thicker air, enabling bomb loads to be doubled. Tremendous efforts were made to strengthen air-sea rescue. Up to fourteen “life guard” submarines were routinely deployed between Iwo Jima and Japan. By late summer, 2,400 U.S. personnel were committed to air-sea rescue, and were achieving dramatic results. If a B-29 landed successfully on the sea, it floated for ten to fifteen minutes. Of rescued