You know how this works
[Heads up: Parts of this story are rated R]
The picture above is not of a city destroyed by a natural disaster. It's not of abandoned buildings degraded by time.
It's a picture of Tokyo after an Allied force's 1945 firebombing campaign.
The Story of Operation Meetinghouse
What's the most expensive U.S. weapons project from the WW2 era? It wasn't the Manhattan Project. It was the Boeing B-29 Superfortress.
The Superfortress cost an equivalent of 43 billion in today's dollars. They designed it for high-altitude strategic bombing. Only 3,970 were ever produced and It was one of the highest-tech weapon systems of its time. With a pressurized cabin and four remotely controlled gun turrets, it was capable of raining down a lot of pain from (what was back then) very high altitudes.
It was a massive machine. With four 18-cylinder propeller engines (capable of producing 2200 hp each), a 141-foot wingspan, cruising speed of 191 knots, and a max range of 5,830 miles, it could carry more than three times the payload of its predecessor, the B-17. Put another way; It would take 1,000 B-17s to carry what 300 B-29s could.
B-29 Applications
Early WWII U.S. air campaigns (in both theaters) consisted of daytime high-level precision bombings with heavy-explosive munitions focused on military targets and factories. These campaigns had little success in Japan, however. While the B-29's innovations allowed them to fly as high as 32,000 feet (well out of reach of enemy fighter pilots), they still couldn’t defeat the weather.
Winds over Japan are insane. At flight levels near 23,000 feet, wind speeds reach 250 miles per hour. These strong winds blew bombs clean off course and off-target, plopping them in the ocean. These unpredictable, high-speed jet streams would often cause unexpected headwinds that sucked down fuel at volatile rates, causing several crash landings.
This was a seemingly impossible obstacle to overcome. Unless, of course, you're Major General Curtis LeMay. He was known as General Iron Ass for a reason. When he took over XXI Bomber Command, he brought much more aggressive, and riskier, tactics with him.
Launch
On the night of March 9th, 1945, Operation Meetinghouse launched. Nearly 300 B-29's took off from the Mariana Islands en route to Japan's capital.
Their cargo was not the usual 500-1,000lb heavy-explosive munitions B-29 pilots were used to carrying. And they weren't flying at high altitudes. Instead, at the order of General LeMay, they flew between 5,000-9,000 feet and carried small-scale, limited incendiaries. Their target wasn't a factory district comprised of metal and concrete buildings. No, it was an urban populace with mostly wooden buildings.
The purpose of Operation Meetinghouse was to create a firestorm that would smoke out the small, mom-and-pop style factory pods which constituted Japan's highly decentralized manufacturing core.
Mission Accomplished
What ensued in the early mornings of March 10th is indescribable, but I'll do my best.
U.S. Forces dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo that morning. When these types of munitions hit the ground, they immediately burst into flames and scatter napalm in every direction. They annihilate everything they touch and can reach extreme heat. Reports claim the center of the Tokyo firestorm reached 1,800 degrees. The heat caused clothes on Japanese backs to spontaneously burst into flames.
If the Japanese didn't burn to death, they suffocated, or worse. The intense heat immediately sucked all the oxygen out of the air. At the warning of the air-raid sirens, before the fires started, many took shelter in sturdy concrete buildings. Oblivious to the type of munition falling on the city, their sturdy shelters soon turned into ovens. One report claims 1,000 Japanese died inside a brick school building. They were not burned, but roasted alive.
At the height of the firestorm, the heat was so severe it melted glass. The convective winds picked up the melted shards and scattered them through the air, creating what can only be described as lava rain. Terror rained down as the melted glass fell on Japanese heads, burning through their scalps and into their skulls.
Many Japanese did the logical thing and ran to water, trying to escape the flames and heat. When they jumped into the water of surrounding pools or the city's river, instead of finding relief, they found themselves boiled alive. The heat was so intense, so extreme, it boiled the Sumida River.
Aftermath
The fire finally went out after two days. A post-raid analysis stated that 16 square miles of Tokyo burned to the ground. More than a million Japanese lost their homes in the attack, and over 100,000 were killed. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey later wrote:
Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a six-hour period than at any time in the history of man.
Crew members of Operation Meetinghouse reported smelling burning flesh inside their planes. Remember, they were flying at 5,000-9,000 feet. The updrafts produced by the heat below not only carried the smells of the travesty taking place on the ground but also caused severe turbulence. In some instances, pilots reported near-instantaneous changes in altitude of 1,000 feet or more due to turbulence.
Many pilots certainly faced moral injury from the raid. Airman Jim Marich said:
We hated what we were doing. But we thought we had to do it. We thought that raid might cause the Japanese to surrender.
First Lieutenant Richard Gross recalls being called into a room where he and other crew members were asked if they objected to firebombing the cities of Japan. Several did. Those crew members were told, “well, that’s your opinion, but the orders are you’re going to go on the mission.”
Lessons Learned?
The horrific aftermath of Operation Meetinghouse did not deter American forces from conducting firebombings. On the contrary, they were encouraged by the results and conducted more.
Sources and Credit
Supernova in the East: A multipart podcast by Dan Carlin
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/magazine/we-hated-what-we-were-doing-veterans-recall-firebombing-japan.html
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/hellfire-earth-operation-meetinghouse
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-firebombing-of-tokyo-continues
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