Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
Japanese to fight might be weakened. At the very least, the attack on Musashino
would serve notice that the strategic bomber force had the power to hit whatever
it wanted to.88
The results of that first mission, like those of most of the precision attacks
that followed in the ensuing months, were disappointing. Despite an occasional
reasonably successful strike, such as the one on December 18 at Nagoya’s
aircraft facilities, the main difficulties arose from a combination of crew
inexperience, operating the aircraft at extreme range limits, and, worst of all,
atmospheric conditions over the targets. Cloud cover was no new problem for
the AAF; air crews had lived with it for more than two years over Europe. The
problem in Japan, however, was compounded by the extreme wind veloci-
ties-up to 200 knots-encountered at 25,000 to 30,000 feet, the normal
preplanned bombing altitudes. Attempting to fly in tight, self-defending
formations in such winds proved almost impossible; worse, if the formation
succeeded in finding the target,
. . . drift was difficult to correct and bomb runs had to be charted directly
upwind or downwind. Attacking Japan’s best-defended cities directly in
the teeth of a 200-knot wind was unthinkable; going downwind the B-29s
reached ground speeds in excess of 500 miles per hour, in which case
neither bombsights nor bombardiers could function properly. Moreover,
the high winds made it impossible for crews to make a second pass if the
run-in failed; if a navigational error brou ht a plane in downwind from
target it might not be able to attack at all. 8$
Early in January, impatient over the results thus far achieved and having
decided to close down XX Bomber Command’s operations from India and
China, Arnold moved the unit to the Marianas to join Hansell’s XXI Bomber
Command and directed a full-scale reorganization. Hansell was relieved;
LeMay replaced him and reported immediately, with the remainder of his
command following in increments over the next several months. As senior air
officer in the theater, LeMay commanded the XXI Bomber Command, soon to
be redesignated, with the XX Bomber Command, as Twentieth Air Force. Like
Wolfe, Hansell returned the the United States.
LeMay quickly departed from Hansell’s pattern of high-altitude attacks. He
introduced low-level attacks and began to,conduct experiments with various
types and loadings of incendiary bombs. On the night of March 9/10, 1945,
LeMay sent out the first massive, low-level, night incendiary raid. The raid
established a pattern that continued through July, interrupted by a lengthy
incendiary bomb shortage, by a short diversion in April of bombing airfields on
Kyushu in support of the Okinawa invasion, and by the minelaying campaign.
LeMay’s incendiary bombing decision was long in coming, having been amply
studied for many years. The COA’s 1943 recommendations on Japanese targets
contained one of the first endorsements of urban-area fire bombing. The
recommendation appeared again in the 1944 review of the earlier work on
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