Unraveling the Shift to B-29's Firebombing Japan
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- B-29 bombers initially operated out of China striking Japanese targets. This deployment was unfeasible due to logistics, bomber range and bombing inaccuracy. Later the B-29s were deployed from the Marianas islands to bomb Japan’s aircraft industry by adopting methods as were adopted in Europe. This included high altitude, daylight formation precision bombing using high explosive bombs. This approach did not work, bombing accuracy was abysmal, bomber attrition was high and engine issues were plagued the program. General LeMay implemented new bombing policies that had a dramatic beneficial effect to bombing of Japan. The video will explore these changes.
My friend (rip) was a B29 co pilot then later pilot during the japan raids. He said that as they had dropped their bombs over japan and were closing the bomb bay doors. smoke filled the cockpit.. the pilot said get ready to bail out.. he looked out and they were still over japan who were not friendly to B29 flight crews.. he got wire cutters from the radio guy. went into the instrument bay and found one what was smoking and started cutting wires into it.. eventually it stopped smoking.. they flew back without a generator.. as that was the voltage regulator.. when the boeing crews looked at what had burnt.. they figured out how to fix it and did that to the other planes.. B29s were falling out of the skys without a radio call.. probably because the power had failed. his name was Otto John Fisher.. he did find a a way to get in trouble on another flight. got sent to the B29 camera ship... ended up flying the camera mission after the first bomb.. he had a fantastic collection of photos from personal cameras in his safe in his storage locker.. somebody broke into his storage locker and tried to get into the save and the photos burned up with everything else inside..
Great story except for the photos being destroyed. I imagine that hurt.
@@scubasteve3032 he was furious about it. He was a great mentor and friend and boss. I knew and worked with him from 1972 till he passed in 2014. He talked at van nuys airshows in the 90s and mid 2000s. Calling out all the other cadets and army air corp flight school instructor after being told to go fly figure 8s. He stood up and called them all liers. The plane does not have enough power to complete a figure 8. The most you can get is a figure 6. The instructor had drawn a vertical 8. Not a horizontal 8 on the chalk board.
He grew up in colorado springs working on the mats of a gold dredge. Was taught by real gold miners how to play poker. Different flight training base staff had crooked poker games set up to clean out the flight cadets. But john played poker better than everybody and took the pot away from the staff. They kept transferring him to get him out of their profitable poker games.
He did a victory roll in a B26 bomber at the end of one training flight. He had been flying fighters before that. The crew swore they would never fly with him again. The ground chief found every rivet knocked loose. He got hauled before the base commander. You should be charged for ruining that brand new plane. But i am going to send you to B29s as now i have a plane that will never fly again to train my ground crews and engine crews as they only had plywood mockups before.
Your friend was co-pilot of The Great Artiste for the Nagasaki mission? Some of the greatest men of the greatest generation!
I had not thought about the jet stream. A 500 mph ground speed is just crazy fast.
A wealth of little known variables and facts which affected early B-29 operations were presented in a clear and understandable manner. GREAT PRESENTATION!!!!!!
In the early 1960's Martin Caiden wrote a book called "A Torch To The Enemy" which detailed the change to low level fire raids. Remember at this time most of the principals (including LeMay) as well as most of the veterans were still alive and could be interviewed. It is well worth the read if you can find it.
The noted poet and writer James Dickey ("Deliverance") was a B-29 crewman in the air campaign over Japan. I believe he was a bombardier. He had an interview on the Dick Cavett show which was memorable for a discussion of his war poetry. Cavett was questioning the morality of bombing Japan, and Dickey turned it around on him, and his own morality, in a wonderfully Southern way.
The Allies didn't start the war but clearly they had a moral duty to end it, the atrocities being committed in Europe and China had to be stopped and the sooner it could all be stopped the less lives would be lost overall.
But still, firebombing cities and burning all those people, I dont think ive lost enough of my Humanity as the Japanese and Nazis lost so the idea makes my blood run cold even if it had to be done.
Poetry or not, there are still plenty of people, even back in the days, condemning mass civilian bombing as occured during WWII. Le May & Bomber Harris were just war criminals.
Met James Dickey when he visited Yokota AFB in the 80s. This man had morals, even though they haunted and questioned him.
My uncle did two tours. I wish you was still alive to talk to. I was a kid teenager didn't mean. Now I'm 50 and I see how big of a sacrifice it was
I think Robert McNamara was an advisor to Lemay in Germany and Japan . He understood that war equipment was composed of lots of component that if interrupted would stop production ie Propellors, no prop, no plane . Fire raids also killed the skilled workers near the plants .Simply put Japan lacked skilled tradesmen to work the machinery and each raid reduced that number .
The intent of this video is to entertain you, which it does very well! Seriously love your work and appreciate your efforts! I often wait until I know I have enough free time to sit and watch your videos uninterrupted.
It’s crazy to me that those planes, and crews, had the endurance for a 14 hour mission.
B-29 was only active starting in 1944. Short Sunderland was flying 13 hour anti-submarine patrols over the North Atlantic years before that. But yes, 4000 miles with such a sizeable bombload is pretty darn impressive.
I wonder why Brits always have to bring up their own accomplishments when someone is impressed with something. Mystery.
At 9:00 it should also be mentioned that Lemay made major changes to aircraft maintenance procedures, which greatly helped with reducing the abort rate.
Each bomber group (45 aircraft) had their (normally) permanently assigned maintenance teams moved to a "pool" system that was set up all groups on that whole island (Tinian, Guam, Saipan). They did engine overhauls and other repairs using an industrial model. It was major success.
One thing that helped increase engine life was the fact that the cylinder head temperature guages for the B29's were identified as faulty, the principle contractor that was making them wasn't properly calibrating them, I can't remember what the error factor on them was but it was significant, like 100° F or more, that's another case of the R3350 engine's getting a bad rap they didn't deserve, if the flight engineers are getting bad information on engine temperature then they're not going to be operating the cowl flaps correctly leading to engine damage, once the problem was discovered and the contractor that was making them started calibrating them correctly that solved a lot of the engine overheating issues.
Also the problem with induction fires in the intake manifolds from an induction backfire occurring when they'd do an engine check before take off were greatly reduced when a proper training program for flying the B29 was finally put together, most people credit the direct fuel injection system with solving the issue and indeed with direct injection induction fires are impossible since there is no fuel in the intake manifold but what few people know is they'd already developed the direct injection system and were in the process of starting to install them in engine's when the properly was actually identified as pilots not handling the engine's correctly simply because they hadn't been trained on the R3350 engine, they were trying to run them like the engine's on B17's because that's what they knew.
When crews were first put together there literally was no proper training program for the pilots, when the first prototype crashed into that meat packing plant in Kansas City the pilot was Boeing's chief test pilot, being their chief test pilot he was the person who was developing the training program for the B29 so when he died so did all the knowledge on how to fly it, as a result the earliest pilots were simply experienced B17 and B24 pilots who were put in B29's and told "Figure it out" because there was no actual training program.
Paul Tibbets first assignment with the B29 before he was task with developing the atomic bombing methods for it was to develop a proper training program for B29 pilots, once it was put in place incidents from induction fires already were dropping dramatically before the direct injection engine's were being fielded.
Just like the majority of the early B29 problems they were a result of what should have been a 5 year development program being compressed into 2 years.
@@dukecraig2402 Excellent information! Thanks for sharing.
@@farmalmta
After starting to learn that a lot of the common narratives that go around about the B29 are actually myths I decided to do the research including buying credible books on the B29 to learn what really happened with them, and interviews with Paul Tibbets are also an invaluable resource when dispelling B29 myths, one thing I discovered that's a HUGE myth about the B29 and it's engine's is the one that it had magnesium engine case's that'd burn as hot as the sun and melt through a wing in seconds, total myth, the R3350 engine had forged steel case's not magnesium, the myth is so intertwined with the B29 that even a guy from the Commerative Air Force claims they had magnesium engine case's in an interview here on UA-cam, I can assure you they didn't, it was the supercharger housing and impeller that was made of magnesium and became a problem when an induction fire (a fire INSIDE the intake manifold) grew all the way back to the supercharger catching the magnesium impeller and housing on fire, but not the engine case's.
During my investigation into the magnesium engine case's myth I found out that what happened was the R3350 engine was originally being developed with magnesium engine case's, but among other reasons including strength issues that had to do with the cylinder base studs being ripped out when the US entered the war magnesium was immediately put on a list of materials that were deemed in short supply along with the special silica sand used for casting and classified as "war essential", since the R3350 was still just in it's development stages and no production lines and the tooling to mass produce it had yet to be set up it was decided to switch them to forged steel, other engine's like the Pratt&Whitney R2800 and the Wright R1820 that were already in production kept their cast engine case's since they were fully developed and weren't experiencing any strength issues.
The problem with magnesium and the special silica sand for casting that they were considered war essential is that domestic production of both were mostly from overseas sources of the raw materials, since shipping as little materials as possible across oceans full of U-Boat's was a priority using as little silica sand that was mostly sourced from an island somewhere around Sri Lanka was considered a wise decision, likewise magnesium was mostly sourced from Brazil and although they eventually joined the war on the Allies side at first were neutral compounding the shipping problem with one of dealing with a nervous government that didn't want it's shores or country coming under attack from the Axis power's to seize the resources for themselves.
Everyone who ever says to me that the atomic bombings were unnecessary will now be directed to the video at 14:34 (showing the city of Shizuoka 66% destroyed), with the reminder that the alternative to the A-bomb wasn't peace, but month after month of air raids like the one that destroyed Shizuoka.
And then suicide attacks by women, children, and old men with bamboo spears when the invasions happened and separate invasions of each island. We saved the Japanese many million dead as well as saving allied soldiers.
I had no idea the TBO on the 3350 on a B29 was down in the 100-300 hour range. Makes me a little more accepting of my Lycoming’s 2000 hour TBO. I only have 150 hours on it, if it was a B29 I would be engine shopping, but it’s a Piper, I am good for 20 more years.
One of your best videos yet. Great work!
Without LeMay's giant cojones, the Pacific War would have cost many more Americans their lives.
This is great as always - I have the Impact series but you have so many other sources. A couple of recent books that criticized the firebombing went on to say “the high altitude conventional bombing should have been given more of a chance” (without any details).
@@alantoon5708
Correct, a few things that people don't understand is first off incendiary bombs were already being stockpiled in the Pacific in preparation for those types of raids before LeMay took over command of the B29 missions, and wherein it might have been his idea to reduce altitude and strip the planes down for speed and increased bomb load but the change to firebombing raids wasn't his call, as mentioned those types of bombs were already starting to be stockpiled before he took over, at the end of the day he was just a theater commander, just like how the target list and priority of the targets for the atomic bombs were done by a committee, or board, whatever they were called, back in Washington so was the decision to change to firebombing was made by one also, a change in plans that big is above someone like a theater commander, decisions that big are made back in Washington by people whose names we never hear, everyone just assumes it was LeMay that made that call because his name and image is plastered all over everything.
It's just like the invasion of Normandy, everyone assumes it was Eisenhower's plan because he was the commander of Allied forces but the actual plan was created by a board of people back in Washington that included high ranking officials from England, France, the US military and most likely people from the State Department, they'd undoubtedly want lawyers looking at everything to make sure everything was legit, as legit as things can be in a war which is kind of a joke, without a doubt the change to something like incinerating an entire city and it's residents isn't left up to a theater commander, they may be close to the top of the food chain but they're not at the very top.
The postwar studies showed that the precision bombing was working. Japanese aircraft engine production was down by huge percentages prior to the switch in tactics- partly due to Japanese dispersion of production due to the raids. However, there was no way for the US to know the raids were working. The actual effects could only be compiled postwar.
I would bet that the people who say that were not getting shot at or crashing into the ocean. It's so easy to have bad opinions when you're sitting behind a desk 1000s of miles and decades away from the front lines.
Outstanding, sir. Real history backed by primary sources unveiling the background to significant wartime actions, reactions and command decisions.
No surprises but A LOT of details I did not know. Thank you for the research and your presentation.
Sounds like LeMay learned a similar lesson that caused the British to switch from daytime to nightime carpet bombing over Europe. The fact the the US 8th air force steadfastly stuck to daytime bombing just made air defense an impossible task for the luftwaffe. Hard to fight the US bombers during the day and the British bombers the same night.
Its not quite the same lesson, or 8th Air Force would have also switched to night bombing. If Lemay had employed the B-29 over Germany they would have continued using it for daylight bombing. It was the wind and weather conditions over Japan the reduced the effectiveness of bombing from high altitude. It was the less effective air defense over Japan that allowed the bombing from lower altitude. And it was the difference in target characteristics that caused the switch from demolition to incendiary bombs.
@@gort8203 agree. You are quite right.
Disagree. Deep dive some Greg's Automobiles and Airplanes UA-cam videos on the Bomber Mafia. They were religious fanatics and their religion was Precision Strategic Daylight Bombing. The RAF went down that road against the Luftwaffe and flak and quickly switched to night bombing. If 8th Air Force had sensible commanders, they would have given up on daylight bombing after assorted massacres in 1943.
The irony is that a year later, the Luftwaffe had finally been tamed and the weather left so few days of good visibility for high altitude daylight raids that the Americans were using radar in blind bombing raids of German cities. They also had "master bomb aimers" who would drop and be promptly matched by all the other bombardiers, meaning very few people were actually aiming the bombload. It wasn't quite the RAF bomber streams and pathfinders in darkness, but it wasn't anything like the Norden bombsight BS that had been developed via testing over Arizona, a far cry from another cloudy day over the Ruhr.
LeMay cut to the chase when he took over XXI Bomber Command, adopted larhely RAF tactics (darkness, Pathfinders, incendiaries, heavier bombloads, lighter gun armaments, smaller crews, lower altitudes) and showed much of what the 8th Air Force could likely have delivered on Germany two years earlier. German cities were less vulnerable to fire than Japanese ones, but Hamburg, Dresden, etc showed they were hardly immune to fire storms.
My question (perhaps a topic for a video) is how did the bomber command know of the existence and exact location of factories and other specific targets? What sources did they have and how did they collate them? For example the propeller plant at Shizuoka?
“Let’s pull on this thread a little more…” music to my ears! Keep up the great work.
As always, amazing work from primary sources.
Japan is long and skinny with mountains and inland seas and surrounding oceans. I live near the ocean and it's temperature drives the weather, when the land is hot the cooler ocean air rushes under the rising land air. And when the ocean is warmer the winds rush towards the ocean. It's always windy from NE, SW, and SE , and changes every few days to a week. The winds would be extremely unpredictable, especially with cool mountain air and warm seas in the mix. Great video, as usual.
That's how wind works all over the world.
Love this channel, please keep posting.
They were flying at 30,000 feet. That's around 5 miles up, with a jet stream. No wonder they were not hitting anything.
Excellent, I didn't know this.
Very good job explaining the different bombing tactics of the Japanese home islands. General LeMay came up with an effective bombing plan however it was a little on the brutal side. I believe he once said if we had lost the war he would have been put on trial for war crimes. Unfortunately things like that seemed to be necessary at the time. I enjoy the way you present these videos. The deep dive on the submarine series was great (pun intended).
The war criminals are the ones who started it.
Robert McNamara is the one who said that LeMay said to him they'd probably have been put on trial for war crimes, LeMay didn't actually say it, or should it be said that he wasn't the source McNamara was as per his recollection of a conversation he had with LeMay, McNamara was on his staff after LeMay took over command of the B29's, it's funny that less than 20 years later he was LeMay's boss when he was Secretary of Defense.
@dukecraig2402 Thanks for clarification. You're right about how the tables can turn in life.
@@lwrii1912
It's like the old saying goes about watching whose toes you step on because thing's could easily turn around one day and the next thing you know they're your boss.
I used to be an ironworker, that sort of thing happens all the time in that occupation, a company can call the union hall and have them send out 25 guy's to man a job and you could be the boss on that crew, on the next job someone else could be designated the boss on that one, so it pays not to let it go to your head and watch how you treat people on a job where you're the boss because on the next one any one of them could very well be your's.
@@dukecraig2402 Words of wisdom for sure.
Thank you for these great videos !
Thanks for a great video. Just fantastic content!
Right on. Thanks for sharing.
Yet again, another fantastic vid.
Outstanding information here.
All of it surprised me - THANKS !
😎👍
10:33 You mentioned that the guns are removed but also, no mention of the cruise for those guns not being needed either. That of course has a large upside of fewer men being exposed to combat hazards
I know that this is completely outside the scope of your channel, but I’d love to see some analysis of B-29 operations during the Korean War as compared to WWII.
WW2 automated turrets turned out to not be so fast a tracking MiGs
+1
Short answer: Mig-15 fodder.
Another well thought through, clearly presented vid.
Excellent content dude
That was really excellent. Thanks!
How did the US justify switching from “clean” precision bombing to night time area bombing? It seemed in Europe, there was a huge emphasis on selling the bombing campaign as a clean and precise weapon and trying to avoid unnecessary urban destruction but when they went to Japan, it seems they just started doing what the RAF did in Europe, so in light of that, how did the bombings of Japan get sold to Americans back home?
The idea that the American daytime raids in Europe were clean precision bombing is false. It's a fiction that people told themselves to avoid confronting the fact of all the civilian deaths and suffering. The reality of bombing a target from high altitude is that you had to drop a lot of bombs on it and most of them would miss for various reasons.
Americans back home wanted the war over, and the military was pressing ahead at full speed to get it over with before the public began to lose patience and question the need for unconditional surrender. Due to this time pressure I think the U.S. sustained a lot of heavy causalities in places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa that were not militarily necessary but were politically expedient. In that atmosphere Japanese casualties were not much of a concern.
If you have followed this video series you know that even if the daylight bombing of Japan had been as accurate as the daylight bombing of Germany it would still have been less effective due to the nature of Japanese industrial infrastructure and facilities.. Without "cleanly" distinguishable large factories to bomb the best way to destroy Japanese productive capacity was to destroy large areas.
Sons and fathers were coming home in body bags when a body could be found at all: Lots of sons and fathers; more every day. It's hard for people to even imagine that now but we might get a chance if we don't stop acting like fools.
The hand wringing wasn’t an issue during the war when people were fighting for survival. It was only postwar, and among those who hadn’t actually been involved in the fighting, it became fashionable.
The B-24 was the single most expensive US weapon system of WWII with 18,500 built @ $300K each for a total of $5.5 billion.
Very informative video. Thank you.
I was very surprised by the hours to overhaul. I was under the impression that they were good for 1,350 hours!
So, fundamentally, the 'three billion dollar gamble' was a failure: a huge part of the complexity of the B-29 was the pressurization, which was only required if you were going to be operating at high altitude. While the B-29 did indeed have a much higher bomb load than it's contemporaries, $3 bln could have bought a LOT of less-capable planes that would have been suitable for the mission ultimately performed.
Great job!
15:20 this graph doesn't impress me at all; changing from individual factories as primary targets, to "the city" is of course going to raise effectiveness; as the individual factories were in the city, a miss is no longer a miss.
Well Done, you need more subscribers.
The slide at 16.01 is very interesting. You could argue conventional bombing was well on the way to pounding Japan into submission without even using the atomic bombs.
The Emperor and his Chiefs wouldnt surrender.
The postwar studies do show that the precision bombing campaign was working.
Nobody ever submitted because of conventional bombing. The British didn't submit, the Germans didn't submit and ythe Japanese probably wouldn't have submitted.
True but the psychological effect was different on the highest levels of command. Even then it was obvious what the effect of more bang for the buck was.
In simple terms they implemented bomber commands tactics and the b29's at last became an effective bomber......simple!!!
I am curious if targets were less specific under the low level night sortie regime.
These videos are brilliant.
Superb documentary making.
Thanks
I recently read a book which stated in matter of fact way that General Hap Arnold directed that the B-29s begin bombing from low altitude at night. It didn't go into any detail about the decision. We've long heard that Lemay implement this tactic, but this gives me reason to question exactly where the idea came from. I have read Lemay's book on the B-29 as well and I don't recall much detail about where the idea actually originated. Was it Lemay's staff in the field or the air staff back in the U.S.? Did Lemay come up with the idea but he couldn't implement it without Arnold's approval due to the priority that had been placed on the B-29 program? Any detailed information on or around this subject would be appreciated.
only 2% of bombs dropped by the daylight high altitude USAAF missions over europe hit their target...those missions were an expensive failure as well.
Yeah but you wouldn't below all
The main purpose of flak is forcing the bombers to fly higher so as to reduce the bombing accuracy. With B29s flew at 30,000 feet altitude, lead to bombing accuracy went out of the windows.
At high altitude the guns don't have shift their aim point much to put more rounds on target. At low altitudes the guns couldn't track nearly as fast, and the planes were out of range much more quickly.
Hiroshima was a very accurate bombing from 30k ft tibbits notice bomb aimer was moving around on seat causing earlier inaccuracies stop it and a pin point impact
great content ! : )
Why would similar tactics not have been effective over Germany? I suppose biggest difference is that Germany had much more effective night fighters and night antiaircraft fire. Which leads to the question of why Japan didn't have better night fighters and AA? Some technological limitation? Operational/doctrinal failure? Something else?
The B-29's engines were a nuisance Ive read about in a few publications and I saw an actual B-29 and B-17 next to each other at an airshow when I was Much younger and what a difference in size and scale! Both were impressive, but especially the B-29.
Spent all that money & time developing the gun systems & didn’t even use them. I am curious about the dramatic drop off in enemy fighter contacts. They obviously weren’t being shot down by the bombers, were they re-deployed somewhere else?
Kamikadzed into ships?
Neat! Thanks! 🐿
it would be interesting to know how much $ would have been saved making use of B17s / B 24s to bomb Japan at theses altitudes which would not have been an issue for these types
I think the issue was one of range from the islands that Japan did not control. B17's had a range of about 2000 miles and B24's a range of about the same but with a heavier bomb load. The B29 had a range of 5300. The Japanese knew that they could reach the mainland from Guam/Saipan and as such knew what was coming (except for the A Bomb)
10:12
Bomber Command was RAF NOT USA!
The 21st bomber command was part of the US 20th Army Air Forces
😂
@@WWIIUSBombersDad was a bombardier. He used Army Air Corps, Air Force, etc interchangeably. I don’t think it was very important to crews.
@@WWIIUSBombers isnt it the 21st AAF Bomb group?
The 3 billion dollar high altitude bomber project was a failure in how it was expected to be used and perform. The success it did enjoy was due to Japan having poor AA protection and few interceptors and skilled pilots. If the B-29 had been used against Germany, the results would have been either disastrous at low altitude or ineffective from high altitude. Not really much bang for 3 billion bucks!
The B-29 would not have been used over Germany the way it was used over Japan. The change in tactics over Japan was not due to limitations of the B-29 in particular, and any bomber dropping from high altitude under those conditions would have had similar results. The conditions over Germany were different, and the B-29 would have bombed from high altitude just like the B-17 and B-24 did, just dropped more bombs.