Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
A difference of opinion quickly arose as to how to prosecute the air war.
The Bombing Survey people, upon returning from Europe, proposed a target list
to include, in priority order, the following:
The Japanese transportation system, including the sea blockade and
attacks on coastal shipping and on railways.
Attacking central ammunition reserves if intelligence could confirm
that such reserves were in central dumps and that they could be
destroyed.
Attacking nitrogen and synthetic oil production and any radar, aircraft,
propeller, and heavy AA plants remaining.
Destruction (in 1946) of Japan’s rice crop and eliminating coke
production at Anshan.
Attacking urban industrial concentrations, but only if such an attack
had at least a one in three chance of hitting any of the above precision
targets or if it was probably the most efficient way of destroying
precision targets.
The JTG had also analyzed Japan’s remaining targets. They did not agree with
the USSBS recommendations. The JTG’s target groupings placed overwhelm-
ing emphasis on rail transportation and shipping, followed by heavy attack on
concentrations of end-product industry and then clean-up attacks on radar,
airplane engine, and specialized armament industries. Urban attacks figured
prominently in the end-product industry category, as the target group’s analysis
indicated that these industries were very vulnerable to incendiary attacks. The
JTG’s inner circle seems to have believed strongly that if fire could destroy
large quantities of war mattriel, it would produce heavy expenditures similar
to those caused by heavy combat. Sustained consumption was important to
reduce Japan’s fighting capacity. To reduce it to a point as low as possible, the
JTG harked back to the analysis of Japanese cities as targets because group
members believed that Japan’s major production and storage facilities were to
be found throughout the cities. Furthermore, urban areas lent themselves to
bombing in poor weather, since precision bombing was not necessary for such
mission^?^
By mid-1945, intelligence officers and the Air Staff had accepted the
operational reality that the weather over Japan simply would not allow the type
of precision bombing for which the B-29 force had practiced at home. The JTG
disparaged nitrogen and petroleum production as targets. Ammunition
fabrication and distribution would suffer, they reasoned, from disrupted
376