Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [83]
By the time the raiders returned to their island roosts, half the capital’s built-up area had been reduced to a burning, smoking, stinking ash heap—the accumulated toll of all missions since November. No further fire raids were inflicted upon Tokyo. The city was no longer worth the effort.
In exchange, on May 25 the previous record B-29 loss was eclipsed when twenty-six Superfortresses were written off—the worst toll ever. It amounted to 5.6 percent of the 464 attacking aircraft, but only four or five were known lost to flak or fighters. About 100 sustained battle damage, four being lost when their crews bailed out rather than buck worsening weather over Iwo Jima.
Prior to the 23rd, the May missions had cost thirty-two bombers; now forty-three had been destroyed in just two nights, though apparently no more than ten to enemy action.
The worst American losses were sustained on the enemy’s ground.
Prisoners
Every Allied airman who parachuted into captivity knew what he faced. Before the March 9 Tokyo fire raid, XXI Bomber Command had instructed aircrews: “If you are shot down, try and get picked up by the Japanese military as quickly as possible. The civilians will kill you outright.” The instructions proved accurate, occasionally in reverse fashion. In February an Imperial Navy pilot had bailed out of his stricken fighter. Badly burned, he was mistaken for an American and beaten to death by a civilian mob. Thereafter Japanese aviators usually wore a rising sun patch on their flight suits.
Nearly 550 Allied fliers were captured in operations over the home islands, excluding the Kurils. However, twenty-nine were captured in the barest sense, being killed almost immediately upon reaching the ground. Another 132 were murdered in prison and ninety-four more died in captivity, notably in a Tokyo fire raid the night of May 25–26, when sixty-two airmen perished in a western suburb. The firestorm engulfed the area, burning the wooden jail and incinerating most of the POWs while 300 civilian prisoners were moved to safety. The few Americans who escaped the building were caught and beheaded by the Kempei Tai, the military police. Concluded navigator Hap Halloran, who had been confined with some of the casualties elsewhere, “May 25 was a very sad day. All B-29ers gave their best, always. Some gave their all.”
Most POWs were tortured; all were abused and some were rendered insane. Those held more than a few months emerged from prison as emaciated as some concentration camp survivors.
Dying in a flaming aircraft—or building—was perhaps not the worst fate possible. A scratch-built crew from the 29th Group was downed on May 5, and met horrid ends. Apparently all bailed out but one was murdered in midair when a Japanese fighter shredded his parachute canopy. Two were killed on the ground and another shot it out with enraged Japanese, literally saving the last bullet for himself. The pilot was captured and sent to Tokyo where he was tortured and interrogated but survived the ordeal. At least six others were moved to Kyushu Imperial University in Fukuoka, between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There they were subjected to vivisection by the anatomy department. Reportedly some of the Japanese acquired a taste for human liver but no witnesses would so testify after the war. Eventually twenty-three Fukuoka military and medical personnel were found guilty of various charges; five received death sentences and four life terms. However, none were executed and all were freed by 1958.
Relatively few war