4000 lb bombs were so huge B-29's could only carry three of them. The planes dramatically jumped upward on their release and about a minute later felt the concussion wave of the bomb's horrific explosion three miles below. The bombing raid on the Kawasaki Aircraft Plant in June 1945 with 4000 lb bombs proved ineffective because the B-29 formation was forced to bomb by radar, missing the aircraft plant by 3000 ft!
The severely wounded crew limped their flak crippled B-29 700 miles on two engines and lost steering control to the safety of Iwo Jima, which the Marines had taken months earlier. Unable to land, the crew bailed over the island. Co-pilot Harry George's fiancé made her wedding dress from the parachute that saved his life. Read the harrowing story
From the start of our training at Grand Island, Nebraska to our shake-down missions from Tinian, all operations were aimed at high altitude, precision bombing. Our B-29’s were designed for the same thing. Starting with the 58th Wing’s first raid on the Japanese homeland from China and continuing with the huge effort from the Marianas Islands, the high-altitude bombing strategy was a failure.
Effects of the Atomic Bombs is a sub-chapter excerpt from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report. The Survey “secured Japanese records, interrogated top Japanese Army and Navy officers, Government officials, industrialists, political leaders” and civilians throughout Japan.
At Kempi Tai I was reunited with most of my crew and placed in an 8x11 ½ foot cell which held sixteen captives. That was the last time I saw daylight until after the atomic bomb was dropped.
This exceptional narrative takes you into the cockpit to experience the crew dialog, comradery, perils and horrors of what was the 20th Air Force’s most costly raid and the one that “finished Tokyo”.
This exceptional narrative takes you into the cockpit to experience the crew dialog, comradery, perils and horrors of what was the first of the 20th Air Force’s two most costly raids (May 23 and May 25).
This exceptional narrative takes you into the cockpit to experience the crew dialog, comradery, perils and horrors of what was the first firebombing mission over Japan and the most devastating bombing raid in history.
[This article is an excerpt from Sgt. Creek’s military memoirs Short Stories of World War II.] It tells the story of a B-29 that caught fire due to being hit by flak. Half the crew bailed out thinking the plane was going down. They were caught by the Japanese and spent months at Kempei Tai HQ Prison as described in the B-29 POW page.
U.S. interrogation of Japanese government and military officials immediately following the end of the Pacific War confirmed that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and did not influence Japan’s decision to surrender.
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