Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [82]
Nagoya was home of the Tokai Army District, headquartered in the historic castle, which was destroyed in the raid. Apparently the area commander was so enraged that he had eleven captured fliers tried for “undiscriminating bombing” and executed by decapitation on July 12. Three more were retrieved from the water by the Imperial Navy and sent to prison camp where one perished.
A second mission pounded Nagoya the night of the 16th with 450 effective sorties more than doubling the damage from the previous mission for seven square miles torched. Two aircraft factories, an arsenal, and a vehicle plant were among the identified targets in the southern part of town. As the bombers winged southward, one-fourth of Nagoya’s forty square miles had been destroyed or seriously damaged.
The previous four fire raids had gutted Nagoya and destroyed some thirty-four square miles of Tokyo, but the capital’s western area, which included the Imperial Palace, remained largely intact. On May 23, LeMay dispatched a new record of 550 Superfortresses to Tokyo, bearing 3,600 tons of fire bombs and high explosives.
Crews had been briefed to spare the Imperial Palace since Hirohito was deemed, in the sterile words of command, “not at present a liability and may later become an asset.” Therefore, the pathfinders put their markers south of the palace and west of the harbor, and the heavy haulers burned out five more square miles.
The bombers reported occasional fighter attacks among 150 or more searchlights but the interceptors were largely ineffectual, accounting for only one of the seventeen missing Superfortresses.
The trailing formations found “swell fires” producing thick smoke clouds topping 7,000 feet, forcing some bombers to swerve dangerously near their companions. The aerial traffic was further complicated by the compressed schedule: more than four aircraft crossing the target every minute. As often occurred in firestorms, aircraft were jarred and thrown about by surging heat waves. Meanwhile, the orange-red glow from the burning city merged with the pale whiteness of searchlights to render the night bright as day.
Even fliers nearing the end of their thirty-five-mission tours were shaken by what they had experienced. A bombardier later wrote, “When crews returned to their bases they handed in their reports with hands that shook, with shock and horror still reflected in their eyes from what they had witnessed just a few hours before.”
Only thirty-six hours later, on May 25, the bombers were back. Some 460 Superforts razed more than seventeen square miles of the nation’s capital: the commercial-financial district and government buildings, including the Foreign Ministry, the Navy Department, headquarters of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and even the prime minister’s residence. Quipped one flier, “Tokyo just isn’t what it used to be.”
The firestorm swirled around ordinary citizens like Fusako Sasaki, who had survived the March 10 debacle. “As I ran I kept my eyes on the sky. It was like a fireworks display as the incendiaries exploded. People were aflame, rolling and writhing in agony, screaming piteously for help, but beyond all mortal assistance.”
The flames swept inexorably toward the Imperial Palace. Previous damage to homes of royal family members was limited to an area outside the palace walls, but this time the emperor’s residence felt the heat, all too literally. Wind-borne embers were blown over the moat, producing uncontrollable brush fires that ignited buildings within the compound. While the emperor and empress waited out the conflagration in their underground bunker, twenty-eight palace denizens perished in flames that consumed several buildings.
Sergeant Kevin Herbert, a literate