Bombing of Tokyo
The bombing of Tokyo was a series of air raids on Japan by the United States Army Air Forces, primarily launched during the closing campaigns of the Pacific Theatre of World War II in 1944–1945, prior to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The strikes conducted by the USAAF on the night of 9–10 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, constitute the single most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history. of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.
The U.S. mounted the Doolittle Raid, a small-scale air raid on Tokyo by carrier-based long-range bombers, in April 1942. However, strategic bombing and urban area bombing of Japan only began at scale in 1944 after the long-range B-29 Superfortress bomber entered service. Superfortress were first deployed from China and thereafter from the Mariana Islands, after they were seized from Japanese forces in mid-1944. B-29 raids from the Marianas began on 17 November 1944 and lasted until 15 August 1945, the day of the Japanese surrender.
With over half of Tokyo's industry spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods, the firebombing cut the city's industrial output in half. Some modern post-war analysts have called the raids a war crime due to the mass targeting of civilian infrastructure and ensuing large-scale loss of civilian life.
Doolittle Raid
The first American air attack on Tokyo was the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942. Sixteen North American B-25 Mitchells modified for carrier operations were launched from, after which they bombed Yokohama and Tokyo and flew on to airfields in China. The raid was largely symbolic, carried out in retaliation for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor four months prior. The raid caused minimal damage to Japan's warfighting capability, but was a significant propaganda victory for the United States. The bombers took off at longer range than planned when the Hornet's task force encountered a Japanese picket boat, resulting in all of the attacking aircraft either crashing or being ditched by their crews short of their designated landing sites. One bomber landed in the neutral Soviet Union and its crew was interned, but then smuggled over the border into Iran on 11 May 1943. Two crews were captured by the Japanese in occupied China. Three captured crewmen were later executed by Japanese troops.B-29 raids
The key development that enabled the USAAF to bomb Japan at scale was the B-29 Superfortress strategic bomber, which had an operational range of and was capable of attacking at high altitude above, where Japanese air defenses struggled to reach them. Almost 90% of the bombs dropped on the Japanese home islands were delivered by the B-29. The capture of islands sufficiently close to Japan enabled B-29s based at airfields there to bomb the home islands with increasing regularity.Prior to the capture of the Marianas, long-range bombing raids were carried out by the Twentieth Air Force operating out of mainland China in Operation Matterhorn under XX Bomber Command. However, while these raids were able to strike parts of southern Japan, they were out of range of Tokyo. It was also logistically difficult for the Allies to maintain a large bomber force in China via circuitous supply routes from India. The strategic situation improved when flight operations from the Northern Mariana Islands commenced in November 1944, but high-altitude bombing attacks using general-purpose bombs were observed to be ineffective by USAAF leaders due to high winds—later discovered to be the jet stream—which carried the bombs off target. Between May and September 1943, bombing trials were conducted on the Japanese Village set-piece target, located at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. These trials demonstrated the effectiveness of incendiary bombs against wood-and-paper buildings common in Japan, and eventually resulted in Curtis LeMay ordering his bomber wings to change tactics and utilize these munitions against Japanese targets.
The first American raid utilizing incendiary munitions was carried out against Kobe on 4 February 1945. Tokyo was hit by incendiaries on 25 February 1945 when 174 B-29s flew a high altitude raid during daylight hours, destroying around of the snow-covered city, using 453.7 tons of both incendiary and fragmentation bombs. Subsequently, LeMay ordered further B-29 raids on the capital, but at a much lower altitude of and at night, judging that Japan's air defenses were weakest in this altitude range, and that Japanese fighter defenses were ineffective at night. LeMay ordered all defensive guns but the tail gun removed from the B-29s, allowing the aircraft to be lighter, use less fuel and carry more ordnance.
When selecting targets for incendiary raids, USAAF planners had consulted maps produced by the Office of Strategic Services which ranked Tokyo's five wards by their potential susceptibility to fire. OSS analysts had considered factors such as the average density and structural composition of buildings, and had even utilized risk assessments produced by Japanese insurance companies prior to the war. While the military objective of incendiary raids was to target small, geographically dispersed "light industry" workshops supplying larger Japanese factories, the decision of which specific neighborhoods to bomb was made based on how well USAAF strategists believed they would burn.
Operation Meetinghouse
On the night of 9–10 March 1945, 334 B-29s targeted the Shitamachi neighborhood of Tokyo in a low-altitude bombing raid. Ultimately, 279 bombers dropped 1,665 tons of bombs on the city. The ordnance consisted mostly of E-46 cluster bombs, which released 38 napalm-carrying M69 incendiary bomblets at an altitude of. The M69s punched through thin roofing material or landed on the ground; in either case they ignited 3–5 seconds later and regurgitated a jet of flaming napalm. A smaller number of M47 incendiary bombs were also dropped; the M47 was a jelled-gasoline and white phosphorus bomb, designed to ignite upon impact. Within the first two hours of the raid, rapidly spreading fires had overwhelmed the Japanese authorities' firefighting capabilities. The first B-29s to arrive dropped bombs in a large X pattern centered in Tokyo's densely populated working class district near the docks in both Koto and Chūō city wards on the water; follow-on aircraft simply aimed near this flaming X. Individual fires caused by the bombs swiftly coalesced into a general conflagration, which would have been classified as a firestorm if not for prevailing natural winds gusting at. Approximately of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have been killed. A total of 282 out of 339 B-29s launched for "Meetinghouse" reached Tokyo, 27 of which were lost due to being shot down by Japanese air defenses, mechanical failure, or being caught in massive updrafts caused by the fires below.The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II, causing more destruction than the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and even Hiroshima and Nagasaki as single events.
Results
High-altitude daylight bombing had previously caused minimal damage to Tokyo's heavy industry, but the destruction caused by low-altitude night-time firebombing wiped out much of the dispersed light industry that provided a crucial source for small machine parts for Japanese war manufacturing. Firebombing also killed or made homeless many factory workers critical to the war effort. According to American intelligence in early 1945, over 50% of Tokyo's industry was spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods; the destruction of these neighborhoods in firebombing raids cut the whole city's output in half. Damage was especially severe in the eastern areas of Tokyo. The districts bombed were home to 1.2 million people in total. The Tokyo police force recorded 267,171 buildings destroyed, which left more than one million people homeless.Emperor Hirohito's tour of the destroyed areas of Tokyo in March 1945 ended his relative lack of involvement in the Japanese wartime decision-making process and contributed to his eventual decision to capitulate to the Allied powers, culminating in Japan's surrender six months later.
Casualty estimates
The US Strategic Bombing Survey later estimated that nearly 88,000 people died, 41,000 were injured, and over a million residents lost their homes in the 9–10 March raid alone. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated a higher death toll of 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 83,793 dead, 40,918 wounded, and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. Historian Richard Rhodes placed the death toll at over 100,000, injuries at a million, and homeless residents at a million. These casualty and damage figures could be low, according to Mark Selden:In his 1968 book, reprinted in 1990, historian Gabriel Kolko cited a figure of 125,000 deaths. Elise K. Tipton, a professor of Japan Studies, arrived at a rough range of 75,000 to 200,000 deaths. Donald L. Miller, citing Knox Burger, stated that there were "at least 100,000" Japanese deaths and "about one million" injured.
The wider strategic and area bombing campaign against Japan killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, mostly civilians.