Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
he alone made the final decision on the use of incendiary weapons on Japanese
cities, he had reached that point as the final player in a year’s long process of
group dynamics.w
Precedent in the AAF existed for LeMay’s action, as did substantial
pressure for it from the highest levels in the service. When he carried the news
of LeMay’s appointment to command the XXI Bomber Command on Guam,
Lauris Norstad told him to solve the training problems, deal with the high winds
and bad weather, and get the job done, or, as LeMay recalled, “If you don’t get
results, you’ll be fired. If you don’t get results, also, there’ll never be any
Strategic Air Forces of the Pacific. . . . If you don’t get results it will mean
eventually a mass amphibious invasion of Japan, to cost probably half a million
more American lives.”100
Norstad’s remarks could not be taken lightly. The weapons had been
shipped to the Pacific and were available, and there seems to have been a clear
acceptance by General Arnold that the tactic was to be used. The Eighth Air
Force had dropped a limited number of incendiary weapons on German targets,
notably the heavy attack on transportation and administration centers of Berlin
on February 3, 1945.”’ In the Far East, the Hangkow raid and the test
incendiary bombing of Nagoya, made over Haywood Hansell’s objections,
indicated a willingness to depart from the doctrinal policy of attacking specific
military or war-support targets with precision bombing. Precision bombing had
not been very accurate, and the constant pressure of proving that the B-29 was
worth its cost led first to Norstad’s and then to LeMay’s decision to use
firebombing. The immediate reasons for the attacks on Japan’s urban areas
derived not just from bureaucratic and political pressures, but also from the
demands of warfare and the wish to use the fastest, most effective method to
end the war. In this regard, the perceived lack of intelligence about Japanese
targets that existed for years at the A-2 office in the Pentagon and later on
Guam played strongly in the minds of all the participants. The lack of clarity
about the targets, and about Japan’s true capacity to resist to the end by
inflicting heavy losses on an invader, was a powerful consideration.
XXI Bomber Command’s difficulties with the weather over Japan were
complicated by the fact that even in late 1944, no liaison existed between the
Joint Intelligence Center in Honolulu and the Twentieth Air Force, even though
JICPOA had for years been reading the Japanese weather observation radio
traffic. In fact, for much of Hansell’s time with the XXI Bomber Command, no
SSO was available to support him. When finally an SSO did arrive at Hansell’s
headquarters, he had to fill in for the A-2 and assistant A-2, both of whom were
delayed by an air crash on Eniwetok. This meant that the SSO, Maj. Charles T.
Kingston, could do little else until early January.”’ When JICPOA’s Air
Estimates Group moved from Hawaii to Guam in April 1945, special intelli-
gence became much more readily available to the airmen. By then ULTRA’S
capabilities had, in many ways, become superfluo~s.’~~
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