It was XXI Bomber Command’s longest nonstop mission: 3,700 miles round trip to a refinery 300 miles north of Tokyo. ‘Bombs Away’ LeMay: America’s Unapologetic Champion of Waging Total War Since then he had exchanged his B-17 for a -29, and now headed what would likely be the last heavy bomber mission of the war-perfect bookends to a unique career. strategic bombing mission in Europe almost exactly three years earlier, striking transport targets in northern France. Frank Armstrong, an extraordinary airman and officer. The largest contingent was 140 Superfortresses of the 315th Bomb Wing, led by Brig. Deployed in seven task forces, the Boeing firebirds were to target transport and oil targets, with overhead times between midnight and 3 a.m. Curtis LeMay’s powerful XXI Bomber Command launched 750 B-29s from the Mariana Islands, some 1,500 miles south of Japan. On the afternoon of August 14 (Tokyo time), Maj. In that time more than 400,000 Americans had died in combat or from war-related causes in defeating first Italy, then Germany and now perhaps Japan. servicemen were bone weary from the sanguinary slogging that ponderously advanced westward from Hawaii to Honshu-at an average rate of about three miles per day. (Naval History and Heritage Command)Īfter 45 months of combat across the world’s greatest ocean, U.S. A Vought F4U-1D Corsair of VBF-83 launches from the aircraft carrier USS Essex in August 1945. As Japan reeled under the triphammer blows, millions of people anticipated Tokyo’s capitulation. Twentieth Air Force had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs on August 6 and 9, immediately followed by the Soviets’ declaration of war and invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria. The situation remained tentative, viscerally uncertain. Meanwhile, the Japanese war cabinet remained divided over surrendering. On the 10th, Tokyo had announced tentative acceptance of the Allies’ Potsdam Declaration calling for Japan’s unconditional surrender, provided that the emperor kept his throne.
Over the previous several days rumors and conflicting reports had skittered over radio broadcasts from Washington, D.C.: Japan was about to surrender Japan was not surrendering. Almost simultaneously, Allied and Japanese fliers fought and slew one another on August 15, mostly without knowing that Tokyo had agreed to surrender. In the Western Pacific on August 14, 1945, thousands of American airmen took off in wartime and landed in peacetime after midnight.
World War II was a global conflagration that transcended geography and time itself-a fact best illustrated on the day the shooting stopped. Last Air Battles of World War II | HistoryNet Close
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