Nemesis by Max Hastings

Author:Max Hastings
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2009-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

George Beck, a B-29 gunner, wrote in his diary after landing back in the Marianas on 10 March: ‘An unforgettable mission…Squadron CO told us we were starting a new phase of the war in which we were going to burn down Japan’s major cities. I took it with a grain of salt—but he was right.’

The 9 March 1945 American bomber attack on Tokyo killed around 100,000 people, and rendered a million homeless. Over 10,000 acres of buildings were destroyed—sixteen square miles, a quarter of the city. A hundred of the capital’s 287 fire stations and a similar number of its 250 medical facilities were wiped out. Over the weeks that followed, the XXth Bomber Command launched a succession of further raids, designed to achieve the same result elsewhere. On 11 March, B-29s went to Nagoya, Japan’s third largest city. Here, damage was much reduced by lack of a wind such as fanned the fires of Tokyo. Only two square miles of the city burned. On the thirteenth, Osaka was much more successfully attacked. Three thousand died, eight square miles of buildings were destroyed, half a million people were made homeless, for the loss of two American aircraft and thirteen damaged. On 16 March it was the turn of Kobe, population one million. Three square miles were destroyed, 8,000 people killed, 650,000 made homeless. Three bombers were lost and eleven damaged, all as a result of operational problems rather than enemy action.

After five such missions in a fortnight, a temporary halt to ‘burn jobs’ became necessary. Air and ground crews were exhausted, supplies of incendiaries were running low. Yet the spirits of LeMay’s command soared. In just five operations they had inflicted upon Japan eight times the damage done to San Francisco by the great 1906 earthquake. The enemy’s cities had suffered in a few short days a scale of destruction which it had taken years to achieve in Germany, because Japanese buildings burned so much more readily. With the benefit of reports from its staff in Tokyo, Soviet naval intelligence reported: ‘Frequent bombings, particularly night attacks, have made a major impact on Japanese civilian morale. Exhaustion, sleeplessness and general strain have resulted in large-scale absenteeism which is affecting Japanese war production and causing acute anxiety in Japan’s ruling circles.’

The vulnerability of Japanese air defences had been laid bare. They lacked good anti-aircraft guns—on 9 March, flak accounted for just three American aircraft. Their radar sets were based on captured 1941-vintage US and British technology, and were highly vulnerable to jamming. Their fighter pilots were poorly trained and ill-equipped either to locate bombers or to destroy them. Pursuing B-29s was a nightmare mission for Japanese fliers. Even those who knew their business found high-altitude engagement with the huge aircraft a gruelling experience. Ten minutes after taking off from the summer heat of Kyushu, Kunio Iwashita noticed ice forming around his oxygen mask. The Zero’s machine guns were almost useless against the Superfortress. Iwashita himself scored just one success, on 29 April—a date he always remembered, because it was his wedding anniversary.

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