Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [75]
The grimmest measure of Meetinghouse’s meaning was found in a single astonishing number. In ten previous attacks since November, Tokyo had sustained fewer than 1,300 deaths. Then, literally overnight, some 84,000 were killed and 40,000 injured. More than a quarter-million buildings were destroyed, leaving 1.1 million people homeless.
Damage to Japan’s industry was considerable. The sixteen facilities destroyed or badly damaged included steel production, petroleum storage, and public services. Probably no one could calculate the number of small feeder factories and family shops that were incinerated in the residential areas.
One of the most illuminating comments on Meetinghouse came from Major General Haruo Onuma of the Army General Staff: “The effect of incendiary bombing on the capital’s organization and the disposition of factories of Japan was very great, and, accompanying this, the main productive power was stopped. It [also] decreased the will of the people to continue the war.”
A matching civilian perspective came from Tokuji Takeuchi of the Ministry of Interior. “It was the great incendiary attacks on 10 March 1945 on Tokyo which definitely made me realize the defeat.”
The irony of the March 10 attack could not have been lost on General Onuma’s colleagues—it was Army Day, observing Japan’s victory over the Russians at Mukden forty years before.
Blitz Week
On the night of the 12th it was Nagoya’s turn.
The industrial center of Nagoya lay between Tokyo and Osaka. Home to 1.3 million people and numerous aircraft and engine plants, the city had been attacked seven times since December but effective sorties totaled only 340 B-29s. Given the size of the city (nearly forty square miles) LeMay’s planners hoped to deliver a crippling blow with 310 bombers in one night.
However, post-strike reconnaissance on the 12th showed barely two square miles destroyed. The operations order calling for a wider bomb pattern had started innumerable small fires, but they lacked the concentration to merge into a full Meetinghouse conflagration. On the other hand, interceptors were poorly equipped to handle a massed night raid and only one bomber was claimed shot down.
On Tuesday night, March 13, the B-29s went after Osaka, Japan’s third-largest city with a population estimated at 3.2 million. The mission plan returned to the close bomb intervals so effective at Tokyo: tight patterns and maximum compression of the attacking force. For the first hour, two planes crossed the target each minute, mostly attacking below 9,000 feet.
Although concentration was achieved, once again weather affected results. An undercast forced most planes to drop by radar, and the previous Friday’s high winds were absent. Nevertheless, more than eight square miles of industrial area and port facilities were razed—about 13 percent of the built-up area.
Once again incredible vertical winds pummeled the Superforts. One tail gunner was battered so violently that he received a Purple Heart. A 9th Group aircraft was flipped inverted but Captain Stanley Black coolly righted the bomber by completing a high-speed barrel roll. The maneuver cost several thousand feet, and the B-29 flew back to Tinian with warped wings, but it got its crew home. Black received a well-deserved Distinguished Flying Cross only to perish with his crew in May.
At 7,000 feet Major Ray Brashear’s 499th Group crew gaped at the spectacle below. One crewman wrote, “Looked as though the whole city was burning.” Their plane was illuminated by searchlights for an agonizing three minutes but the B-29 sustained no hits. In fact, only one of the 285 attacking bombers failed to return in exchange for more than 4,000 shops and factories destroyed.
After a record