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The American air campaign against Tokyo was probably the most destructive conventional air campaign carried out against any city during the Second World War, lasting for nearly a year and destroying large parts of the city.
After a brief look at the Doolittle raid, the author examines why Tokyo was such an important target. Tokyo itself was Japan’s largest city, and the combined urban area including Kawasaki and Yokohama contained ten million people and 25% of all industrial workers. Kawasaki was the industrial heart and Yokohama the naval heart.
After the Doolittle raid Tokyo wasn’t attacked until late in 1944, but from then until the end of the war it was the target of B-29 raids, carrier strikes and fighter sweeps, with nearly three dozen major raids carried out. The city was devastated on a scale at least equal to that of the more famous atomic bomb raids.
When we move on to look at the attacker’s capabilities we realise just how much of America’s war effort went into producing that outcome. A huge technical and industrial effort was needed to produce the B-29 Superfortress and to build the hundreds of aircraft needed for a major bombing campaign. This aircraft had been designed with the Pacific theatre in mind, and was only used in that theatre during the Second World War. A key aim of the island hopping campaign and the conquests of the Marianas for the bombers and Iwo Jima for the fighters were partly carried out to give the bombers somewhere to operate from. The US Navy ended up with sixteen fast carriers capable of sending 1,000 aircraft against a single target, and although this force was used widely across the Pacific, it was also used frequently against the Home Islands, especially as other targets began to run out.
On the Japanese side a great deal of effort went into defending the Tokyo area. However we see that effort being weakened by the divide between the Army and Navy, which went beyond the levels of inter-servive rivalry seen in other countries and was often very damaging to the Japanese war effort (both services ran coastal radar networks for instance, but didn’t exchange information between them). The preference for the attack over the defence also caused problems, reducing the numbers of anti-aircraft guns and defensive fighters in the area. Fuel shortages increasingly restricted the use of fighters, until in April 1945 the Imperial High Command decided to hold them back to resist the expected invasion (the same happened to the best Japanese tanks). The scattergun nature of Japanese military procurement during the war meant that seven different types of day fighter aircraft and four types of night fighter were used. There weren’t enough anti-aircraft guns. The civil defense organisation was good, but the fire service too small and would soon be overwhelmed.
The USAAF had a specific purpose during the Second World War, to prove that air power could defeat a major opponent without the need for a ground invasion. In Europe the chance to prove that soon passed, with American troops fighting in North Africa, Italy, and north-western Europe before the Eighth Air Force could prove its case. In Asia the USAAF realised it had most of 1945 to try and knock Japan out of the war using air power. The technique they would use to achieve this was to be precision daylight bombing aimed at surgically destroying Japanese industry.
On the Japanese side the defence of Tokyo went beyond the military, as it was the home of the Emperor and thus the spiritual heart of the Japanese Empire. However even this wasn’t enough to convince the Army and Navy to cooperate. The civil defense effort was more impressive, with massive fire breaks created in Tokyo, and a vast civilian organisation created. However none of their efforts were on the right scale to deal with the massive air attacks that were to come.
When we move onto the campaign it self it soon becomes clear that the precision daylight campaign didn’t work. Japanese defences weren’t the problem – accuracy was. The B-29s flew at very high altitude. In the still air over the American deserts where they had practised they could still bomb accurately from this altitude, but in the windy skies over Japan that simply wasn’t the case. The first raid only 24 aircraft out of the initial force of 111 attack the target and only 48 of their 240 bombs land inside the factory. Even they did little damage – the 500lb general purpose bomb used by the Americans was too light to damage concrete factories or heavy industrial machinery. However the Japanese only destroyed one bomber and that was through ramming. We see this pattern for the next three months – B-29s able to attack Tokyo with minimal risk, but doing minimal damage. The US Navy’s first raid was more succesful, with the carriers spending two days attacking Japanese airfields and factories and doing significant damage.
This changed in March 1945 with the first fire raid. We see how a change of commander at the 20th Air Force led to a change of tactics, taking advantage of the unusual vulnerability of Tokyo to incendiary bombing. We see how Le May was willing to try a totally different tactic – low level mass incendiary bombing at night with the aim of burning out large parts of the city. The first of these raids triggered a fire storm, causing massive damage and huge numbers of casualties. Indeed this was by far the most destructive of the incendiary raids, killing at least 83,793 people, twenty times more than any later raid (at least in part because of the massive evacuation that followed). This was one of several turning points. In the following weeks the P-51 began to operate with the bombers, largely eliminating fighter opposition. More electronic counter measures were used. The 2,000lb M-66 GP bomb was introduced, and proved to be far more destructive than four 500lb bombs.
This is a good account of this massive aerial battle, with a succesful mix of overview and individual raid accounts. As a result we can follow the higher level decisions and tactics that shaped the campaign as well as see the outcome of individual raids.
Chapters
Chronology
Attacker’s Capabilities
Defender’s Capabilities
Campaign Objectives
The Campaign
Aftermath and Analysis
Author: Mark Lardas
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 96
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2024