Bombing from China

The first B-29S began arriving at Indian bases near Kharagpur in April 1944, and from there they would fly east for one thou­sand miles to their advanced airfields at Chengtu, China, the site of four 8,500-foot runways that more than three hundred thou­sand Chinese peasants had constructed by hand. Major General Kenneth “К. B.” Wolfe commanded the force of roughly one hundred Superfortresses, their crews, and support personnel that comprised the XX Bomber Command of Arnold’s Twentieth Air Force. Wolfe, a pilot from Denver and one of the Army Air Forces’ top engineers, had supervised в-29 flight tests and had organized, trained, and led XX Bomber Command from its inception. Still, he never anticipated the logistical nightmare that he would face to get his bombers positioned to raid Japan. To provide the nec­essary fuel and munitions, c-46 cargo aircraft typically carried one thousand pounds of gasoline and three thousand pounds of bombs on resupply missions across the “Flump” of the Himala­yas. B-29S had to shuttle fuel as well, and required seven flights from India to China just to build up the needed gasoline for one flight from Chengtu against Japan.42 As Twentieth Air Force Com­mander, Arnold tried to provide as much assistance as he could from his office half a world away. The stress took its toll, how­ever, and helped trigger his third heart of attack of the war on 10 May. For the next month Possum Hansell, who served from the Pentagon as Twentieth Air Force Chief of Staff, provided Wolfe with guidance while Arnold recuperated.

On 15 June 1944, after a preliminary raid from Indian bases against a Bangkok rail junction, XX Bomber Command finally launched the aptly named “Operation Matterhorn.” The attack against the Yawata Iron and Steel Works on Kyushu revealed that the beginning of the bomber offensive did not mean the end of adversity for the в-29 force. To conserve fuel the Superfortresses attacked at night in a bomber stream flying one behind the other; formation flying in daylight would have burned more gasoline. Ninety-two B-29S departed India for Chengtu; seventy-five made it to China; sixty-eight managed to get airborne for the 1,600- mile flight to attack the Yawata factory; of those, only forty-seven dropped their bombs against it—and most of the bombs missed. Darkness, smoke, and haze combined with inexperienced в-29 radar operators to produce the inaccuracies. Only one bomber fell to enemy defenses, though various malfunctions claimed an­other seven.43

Matterhorn continued, but persistent logistical difficulties and dismal weather caused it to occur in fits and starts. Most attacks occurred against steel production facilities, the only significant targets in range from the Chinese bases. Not until 7 July did XX Bomber Command again bomb Japan, and only fourteen bombers completed the mission. The next major raid did not transpire until 29 July, an attack on coke ovens at the Showa steelworks in An – shan, Manchuria, responsible for a third of Japan’s steel supply.

Arnold was grateful for the positive response that the B-29S raids elicited from the American press and public, especially in the aftermath of the acclaim received by the Army and Navy for the Normandy invasion, but he could not tolerate a feeble effort that produced minimal bombing results.44 He decided to replace Wolfe with an innovative bomber commander from the Euro­pean theater who had a sterling reputation but whom Arnold had never met—the Army Air Forces’ youngest major general, Curtis LeMay. Wolfe possessed an excellent engineering background, yet he lacked combat experience. Arnold wanted a combat leader—an “operator”—and LeMay ably fit the bill. He took control of XX Bomber Command on 29 August. A week later, he participated in a renewed attack against the Showa steelworks at Anshan by ninety-five B-29S that produced significant damage.

LeMay was not impressed by the success and instituted a rig­orous training program for his crews. It included daylight forma­tion tactics similar to those he had devised for Eighth Air Force, with an emphasis on “lead crews” to guide the formations and signal the remaining crews when to drop their ordnance. To as­sure that such “pattern bombing” could occur in all weather con­ditions, both the bombardier and radar operator in the lead air­craft monitored the bomb run so that either could take control of the aircraft depending on the amount of visibility present over the target. By carefully managing his supplies, LeMay increased the frequency and intensity of XX Bomber Command raids. He also increased bombing accuracy. “We are now ten times more efficient than we were in August,” he boasted to Arnold at the end of November.45

Pleased by the results, Arnold wrote Tooey Spaatz in Europe: “With all due respect to Wolfe he did his best, and he did a grand job, but LeMay’s operations make Wolfe’s very amateurish.”46 Ar­nold’s letters to LeMay transitioned from a salutation of “Dear LeMay” on 2.2 September to “Dear Curt” on 17 November.47 A month later, Arnold complimented LeMay for a recent attack on Singapore that placed 41 percent of the bombs within one thou­sand feet of the aiming point. “I follow the work of the XX Bomber Command in far greater detail than you probably think,” Arnold remarked. “The в-29 project is important to me because I am con­vinced that it is vital to the future of the Army Air Lorces.” In a handwritten note at the end of the letter, he added: “Tell all con­cerned how much the good work being done is appreciated.”411

By December 1944, questions of “where” and “how” to ac­complish good work against Japan loomed large. Ten months ear­lier the coa had examined target possibilities for Chengtu-based B-29S, and listed shipping concentrations, coke and steel produc­tion, aircraft factories, radar and radio installations, petroleum facilities, and urban areas. The coa cited seven urban areas in Kyushu, with a total population of 1,182,000, and noted that in raids against them, the “essential public utilities and thousands of small plants, as well as a number of large plants, would be destroyed.”49

In August 1944, though, coa members changed their minds. Based on their examination of attacks against German “urban in­dustrial areas,” they concluded that “the economic consequences of attack upon such areas [in Japan] are not likely to be large.” Acknowledging an inability to estimate the psychological effects of area raids, they pointed to “the successful results achieved in Europe by concentration upon precision target systems,” and rec­ommended that the в-29 force do the same. “Attacks upon ur­ban industrial areas should be postponed until ample forces are available after completing the attack on precision targets,” the coa advised. “The attack should then be concentrated upon the most important industrial areas which are Tokyo, Kobe-Osaka and Nagasaki.”50