Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [137]
63 On December 19: XX Bomber Command mission summary, 19 December 1944.
65 “The barn door”: Keith Todd, 40th Bombardment Group (VH) History (Nashville: Turner, 1989), 30–31.
65 The nine homeland strikes: Actual numbers of XX Bomber Command’s missions to Japan were 498 of 3,058 total sorties delivering 961 of 11,244 tons of ordnance.
65 “I’ve never been able”: LeMay and Kantor, Mission with LeMay, 322.
CHAPTER THREE: FROM THE SOUTH
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67 “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”: See the author’s detailed treatment, Clash of the Carriers (New York: Caliber, 2005).
68 “There was good reason”: Masatake Okumiya and Jiro Horikoshi with Martin Caidin, Zero: The Story of Japan’s Air War in the Pacific (New York: Bantam, 1991), 272.
68 The Navy Seabees were so popular: The film was The Fighting Seabees, 1944, script by Borden Chase, directed by Edward Ludwig. “Seabee” derived from the acronym for “construction battalion.” Contrary to the film and public impression, Seabees did not all come from prewar construction crews. However, the average age was thirty-seven, well past the median twenty-six of all military personnel. Some experienced old-timers, eager to make a contribution, leveraged their experience and know-how into service at age sixty or more. “Paving the Way to Victory,” https://portal.navfac.navy.mil/pls/portal/url/ITEM/130B09D8E61041B3E0440003BA8FC471.
70 “A world of difference”: Okumiya and Horikoshi, Zero, 195–96.
70 In December 1944: “Engineer Aviation Units,” http://www.usace.army.mil/publications/misc/un21/c-14.pdf, 336, 375.
71 “It would rain”: Howard Chamberlain, 504th Bomb Group, http://www.444thbg.org/unithistoryinfo.htm.
71 On Saipan: “Paving the Way to Victory,” https://portal.navfac.navy.mil/pls/portal/url/ITEM/130B09D8E61041B3E0440003BA8FC471.
73 “some matronly ladies”: William R. Thorsen, oral history, “World War II Through the Eyes of Cape Fear,” University of North Carolina, Wilmington.
74 The enormity of the job: Commander Edmund L. Castillo, The Seabees of World War II (New York: Random House, 1963), 118, 123, 128–29.
74 every field was completed on schedule: Ibid., 129.
75 some Easterners insisted: Ibid., 118.
75 When the Tinian complex: Dan McNichol, Paving the Way: Asphalt in America (Lanham, MD: National Asphalt Paving Association, 2005), 193–95.
75 “The lieutenant was infuriated”: Gordon Bennett Robertson, Jr., Bringing the Thunder (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2006), 132.
76 the centralized nature: René J. Francillon, Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War (London: Putnam, 1979), 15.
76 “The Americans chose”: Okumiya and Horikoshi, Zero, 303–4.
76 “One of the biggest”: Assistant Chief of Air Staff–Intelligence, HQ AAF, Mission Accomplished: Interrogations of Japanese Industrial, Military, and Civil Leaders, Washington, DC, 1946, 23.
77 “Many a factory”: Okumiya and Horikoshi, Zero, 304–5.
78 In September 1941: O’Donnell’s nine-plane flight was not the first Flying Fortress deployment to the Philippine Islands, as a smaller group had preceded him. When the Japanese attacked in December 1941 there were thirty-five bombers in the Philippines, most being destroyed on the ground.
79 Nevertheless, navigators remained: National Museum of the Air Force Web site, http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1619.
80 “a large, gray pork chop”: Robert Leckie, Battle for Iwo Jima (New York: Random House, 1967).
81 “terrible coral”: “Guam Airfields,” http://www.geocities.com/alwood.geo/B29Guam/Lairfields.html.
82 The declining standards: Alvin Coox, Japan: The Final Agony (New York: Ballantine, 1970), 60.
84 During an interception: Henry Sakaida, Imperial Japanese Navy Aces, 1937–45 (London: Osprey, 1998), 88–89.
84 The November 24 mission: XXI Bomber Command mission summary, 24 November 1944.
84 targets of last resort: Ibid.
86 later study showed: Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan During World War II (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 132.
86 Brigadier