Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [77]
The big, two-tone auto made its way through the rubble-strewn streets at 20 mph, the emperor occasionally stopping to speak with local officials. In one ward alone, fifty houses remained of nearly 13,000, and more than 10,000 people were known dead or injured. Everywhere the heart-wrenching sights and reeking smells lingered: blackened wreckage, eviscerated buildings, broken water mains, some spewing sewage. Ultimately, four weeks would be required to dispose of at least 84,000 corpses.
On days that might have been resplendent with cherry blossoms, logjams of blackened, bloated corpses clotted Tokyo’s Sumida River. One resident remembered, “I felt nauseated and even more scared than before.”
The emperor’s thoughts must have been varied: from the incredible loss of life to irreparable damage to the city to reduction of manufacturing capacity. Apparently the last thing that occurred to him was to end the war.
Suppressing the Kamikazes
Japan’s aerial suicide threat was well established by March 1945, and it was not going away. Kamikaze squadrons had debuted in the Philippines five months before, with spectacular effect. Between late October 1944 and the end of January 1945, about 375 kamikazes sank sixteen American ships and damaged eighty-seven. The Tokkotai (suicide troops) would certainly appear at Okinawa to contest the upcoming April landings.
Complying with the Joint Chiefs directive, the 20th Air Force attacked kamikaze bases from March 27 to May 11. In those six weeks three-quarters of the Marianas B-29 missions hammered nineteen Kyushu and Shikoku airfields with nearly 2,000 sorties.
The airfield campaign resembled nothing so much as a contraceptive directed against the kamikaze hatcheries. Rather than trying to smash every potentially lethal egg, the B-29s sought to ravage each nest by destroying the bases or rendering them impotent.
Most of the attacks were conducted in squadron strength, typically with eight to twelve bombers dropping fifty tons of bombs on each field. Though hangars and workshops were targeted, the major damage was done to runways. However, the industrious Japanese proved efficient in conducting repairs, leading to frequent repeat B-29 strikes. Therefore, on some missions more than half the bombs were delayed-action—from one to thirty-six hours—to dissuade repair crews.
LeMay ran the airfield campaign in three phases, beginning slowly. Phase One involved just three operations over thirteen days, totaling 265 effective sorties against seven primary targets. The missions had little to show for their efforts. In fact, Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, the kamikaze warlord, reckoned the effort “pinpricks.” He noted that one of the early attacks missed the target entirely and killed a lone farmer in a field.
Phase Two represented a serious effort. Between April 17 and 29 the Marianas command operated on eight of thirteen days, averaging 133 bombers each. LeMay firmly believed in a “restrike” policy, targeting some fields six or seven times to keep the bases beaten down. Kokubu, Kanoya, and Kanoya East on southern Kyushu especially drew repeated visits.
The heaviest bomber losses of the campaign occurred on April 28 when five B-29s went down. But that figure represented 4 percent of the 122 planes that attacked six bases.
Even with small losses, every statistic concealed a heartache. Outbound from Japan that day, the 39th Group’s Black Sheep saw another B-29 in extremis. Ganged by “a swarm of interceptors,” and with one engine afire, Lieutenant Alexander Orionchek’s bomber had no chance by itself. But Captain John H. Pulley, Jr., never wavered. He maneuvered Black Sheep into position to defend his squadron mate, remaining with him until ninety miles offshore.
Pulley’s crew watched the crippled aircraft