Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [214]
The U.S. Navy pressed relentlessly for air force assistance in tightening its blockade, calling for the B-29s to be diverted from attacking cities to laying mines in Japan’s home waters. As in Europe, the airmen resisted any “distraction” from their independent strategic mission. Only grudgingly were some of LeMay’s aircraft committed to mining at the end of March, prompted by fear that otherwise the navy would demand its own force of long-range aircraft. Some nine hundred mines were laid in Operation Starvation. Its impact was dramatic. The Japanese were as short of minesweepers as they were of everything else. The Shimonoseki Waterway was closed to shipping for a fortnight, prompting a 50 percent fall in imports. This crisis eventually induced the Japanese naval command to order supply ships to brave the channel, which caused a spate of sinkings. In all, B-29s dropped 12,000 sea mines, which accounted for 63 percent of all Japanese shipping losses during the period of their participation. Had LeMay’s force been instructed to spend the rest of the war tightening the blockade, it would almost certainly have made a more useful contribution than by continuing the incineration of cities.
But it was not. In April, LeMay’s men attempted some daylight raids on aircraft factories, which provoked heavy air battles. One formation was met by 233 Japanese fighters. Yet American losses from all causes remained between 1.3 and 1.6 percent, low by European standards. The B-29s returned to firebombing. On 13 April 352 aircraft attacked the “Tokyo arsenal area,” as briefers designated the capital. A further 13.2 square miles of the city were burnt out, for the loss of eight aircraft. A week later, bombers attacked airfields on Kyushu, to assist the Okinawa campaign. Crews resented the diversion from their “real” task. Bombing was insufficiently accurate to make much impact on runways. For April as a whole, LeMay’s planes devoted 31 percent of their effort to cities, 25 percent to aircraft plants, 37 percent to airfields.
Following the capture of Iwo Jima, P-51 Mustang fighters with long-range fuel tanks began to fly escort missions for the bombers. Their commanders hoped to inflict heavy attrition on the enemy’s fighters in the air, as they had done against the Luftwaffe in Europe. Yet the fighters were notably less successful over Japan, partly because they met so few enemy aircraft. They were reduced instead to strafing “targets of opportunity,” which proved relatively costly. Single-seat aircraft also proved alarmingly vulnerable to bad weather, and consequent blind navigation. On 1 June, a formation met a thunderstorm and violent turbulence, which inflicted a disaster greater than Japanese defences ever achieved: a B-29 tried to reverse course with its accompanying fighters, and met the following formation head-on. A shocking twenty-seven aircraft and twenty-four pilots were lost.
The Mustangs were plagued by misfortunes. Iwo Jima’s alternating dust and mud created technical hazards. There were bewildering parachute failures—fifteen out of seventy-five pilots who tried to bail out suffered fatal malfunctions. Though the fighters possessed sufficient fuel endurance to reach Japan, many of their pilots found the long haul from Iwo intensely stressful. The VIIth Fighter Command began to rotate fliers out of combat after a mere fourteen or fifteen missions. Few airmen managed even that many. By May, some 240 Mustangs were committed to supporting bomber operations. The squadrons claimed to have shot down 221 Japanese aircraft, but the Americans lost 114 Mustangs in combat and 43 from operational causes, along with 107 pilots. This was a much less favorable exchange than had prevailed in the European theater. Given that the B-29s had shown themselves extraordinarily resilient to