Whirlwind

by Barrett Tillman

  Lassie’s perforated airframe quickly lost pressurization, exposing the crew to subzero temperatures. Mulligan was trapped in the mangled tail, suffering severe frostbite before his friends could extract him. They stripped off his frozen clothes and piled on anything available to protect him as the pilots dived to denser, warmer air.

  Irish Lassie shook off the effects of two collisions and repeated gunfire hits to return to Saipan. Barely controllable, she smashed down hard and collapsed on the runway, a write-off, but her crew prevailed. Chuck Mulligan lost both his frozen hands and radar operator Walter Klimczak sustained serious injuries to his pelvis, back, an arm and leg. Nevertheless, both men survived thanks to the Superfortress’s tough airframe.

  That battle had been won in the B-29 factory in Omaha.

  Three other 497th crews were less fortunate. Shady Lady fell to suicide pilots and Haley’s Comet was shot down by a navy night fighter, which likely succumbed to the defenses in turn. Were Wolf blew in two, possibly when gunfire detonated part of its bomb load. Seven men bailed out but only three survived, apparently because four parachutes malfunctioned.

  Fighters hacked down the 499th’s Rover Boys Express, flown by Lieutenant Edward “Snuffy” Smith. A twin-engine Nick executed a devastating pass just before bombs away, knocking out three engines, killing a gunner and wounding two more fliers. The crew abandoned ship amid other fighter attacks but navigator Raymond Halloran stopped to gulp part of a sandwich, uncertain when he might eat again. Knowing that Japanese pilots often killed parachutists, he fell for about 23,000 feet before pulling the ripcord. Dangling beneath his canopy at about 3,500 feet, “Hap” Halloran was thinking about his landing when he heard aircraft engines. Looking up, he saw three Japanese planes—fixed-gear trainers—closing in. With nothing to lose, he waved. Two of the planes broke off but the other circled protectively, the pilot tossing a salute.

  Fifty-five years later Halloran shook hands with his guardian angel, Corporal Hideichi Kaiho, who had declined to use his machine gun on the helpless American. Kaiho explained that his commanding officer had insisted that his men abide by the traditional Bushido code of chivalry rather than the militarist version that regarded enemies with murderous contempt.

  Halloran was extremely fortunate; one Rover Boys crewman was murdered by civilians and another disappeared into prison camp, never to emerge. Halloran found himself displayed in Tokyo’s Ueno Park Zoo. He was kept naked in a tiger cage, vacant since the government had killed or starved the animals to death to prevent their escape in a bombing.

  Typically, both sides thought they did far better than the facts allowed. Against nine B-29s lost to all causes, the Japanese celebrated twenty-two kills, while the bomber gunners downed about fifteen fighters—one-quarter of the Americans’ claim. Still, it had been a bitter, hard-fought battle that boded ill for the near future. Sixty B-29 crewmen had been killed or captured.

  By month’s end Hansell was gone. Ironically, he was replaced at a time when he was making progress: placing greater emphasis on crew training; improving weather information; and eliminating unnecessary aircraft weight. In establishing a school for lead crews, he had taken a page from LeMay’s European Theater book, but the concept also had proven itself in China. Nonetheless, Haywood Hansell sidled from airpower’s center stage and faded from history’s front lines. Subsequently he commanded a training wing in New Mexico and finished the war with Air Transport Command in Washington. He was medically retired in 1946, but was recalled during the Korean War and finished his career as a major general. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that his greatest contribution was achieved in that sweltering Alabama summer of 1941 when he and four colleagues wrote the AAF’s plan for fighting World War II.

  “If You Don’t Succeed . . .”

  Officially, Curtis LeMay’s professional neck was on the chopping block amid some professional choppers. Later he paraphrased a message from Norstad: “If you don’t succeed, you will be fired. . . . If you don’t get results it will mean eventually a mass amphibious invasion of Japan, to cost probably a half a million more American lives.”

  However, to LeMay’s ears Norstad’s threat probably rang as hollow as an empty fuel drum. It was far from clear who might replace LeMay were he fired. Apart from his unexcelled background, no one had his experience operating the B-29 in combat, let alone duplicating his results in the CBI. With Wolfe and Hansell already sidelined, Arnold would have to reach far down the roster to summon another field captain, and nobody came close to LeMay’s winning record.

  Because it is inconceivable that Norstad’s message was delivered without his chief’s approval, it bespoke Arnold’s desperation. He had staked not only his own reputation and the AAF’s biggest program upon the Superfortress, but also his cherished vision: an independent air force in the future.

  Norstad was correct about one thing. Though he surely exaggerated the likely toll of American dead, an invasion of Japan could only be averted by massive violence applied from the air. Even then it was uncertain that Tokyo would capitulate under the weight of B-29 bombs, but no other option applied. Therefore, thirty-eight-year-old Curtis LeMay accepted the enormous burden upon his shoulders, shrugged off the threat, and got on with the war.

  However, it was a two-front war and the opposition included the U.S. Navy. When LeMay obtained back-channel information on the host service’s priorities, he found XXI Bomber Command somewhere on the fifth page, after tennis courts, interisland boating docks, and the fleet recreation center. Perhaps uncharitably, he inferred that Admiral Chester Nimitz, commanding the Pacific Theater, believed that B-29s bombing Japan did nothing to enhance the Navy’s public image.

  In January the command grew with arrival of the 314th Wing on Guam. The commander was Brigadier General Thomas S. Power, an intelligent, competent officer almost totally lacking in people skills. At age thirty-nine he was well experienced, having flown B-24s in the Mediterranean Theater before standing up the 314th. He would become one of LeMay’s most trusted subordinates.

  In the eleven weeks before LeMay took over, the command had logged seventeen missions, averaging one a week to Japan. Of the 950 sorties, 170 (18 percent) had failed to bomb a primary, secondary, or alternate target, and no target had been destroyed. It was a wasted effort that LeMay could not abide. Regardless of the threat hanging over him from Washington, he was determined to find a better way. True to form, he reverted to basics, focusing upon “a real training job once more.”

  Frustrated that the wizardry of radar was not being fully exploited, LeMay collared his resident electronics specialist, Dr. King Gould, “a capable scientific type” from MIT. LeMay told him, “Pick out a couple of the stupidest radar operators . . . and Lord knows that’s pretty stupid.” LeMay designated a point on Guam’s coast and asked Gould to determine whether subpar operators could distinguish it from the surrounding water. The chief was not being entirely uncharitable, as radar had come late to the B-29 program and many extraneous gunners had been assigned the duty with little interest and insufficient training.

  After some test flights, “Doc” Gould reported back, allowing as how some of his guinea pigs might become tolerable technicians if provided ample training. Gould uttered the magic word—training. True to form, LeMay established a radar school for current operators as well as new crews, featuring both classroom lectures and airborne training.

  Apart from remedial education, LeMay had to juggle several administrative balls at once: Allied, inter- and intraservice politics; supply and logistics; intelligence and targeting; maintenance; and personnel concerns. The latter included the all-important aircrew rotation policy. In Europe the twenty-five-mission tour for bomber crews had been increased to thirty owing to reduced losses in 1944, then to thirty-five. That same figure was applied to XXI Bomber Command, but a comparison of the two theaters was incompatible. From Guam to Tokyo and back took fourteen to fifteen hours flying time versus less than nine hours round-trip from England to Berlin. There
fore, during thirty-five European missions a B-17 crew might log 300 combat hours, whereas its B-29 counterpart could expect 500 hours, nearly all over water.

  XX Bomber Command’s loss rate from June through December had averaged 5 percent, and the XXI’s first three months in the Marianas ran 4.1 percent. However, more pertinent to aircrews was that in LeMay’s first six homeland missions, losses among effective (nonabortive) sorties ran 5.6 percent. That was not a cheerful number. Extrapolated over a thirty-five-mission tour, it meant that B-29 crews lived on borrowed time after eighteen sorties. Nonetheless, morale held as the actuarial figures improved and the first crews to reach thirty-five missions rotated home in May.

  Another problem was facilities for the new units. When the 314th Wing arrived in January, Guam’s North Field was largely completed but had precious few accommodations. LeMay was living in a tent at the time, in vivid contrast to Guam’s admirals, who entertained him in hilltop houses and even on a yacht. Through most of its existence XXI Bomber Command slept under canvas, which was semitolerable, but some engine components and most electronic systems needed indoor spaces, away from blowing dirt and excess moisture.

  Under LeMay’s direction, the Marianas command launched six major missions from January 23 to February 19, totaling 646 sorties with eighty-eight aborts (13 percent), a measurable improvement owing to LeMay’s more efficient maintenance policies. But results were mixed: the portion of planes bombing the primary target ranged from zero to 70 percent, mainly depending upon weather. Overall, just one in three bombers attacked the primary—a galling figure to LeMay, whose standard of acceptability was target destruction. Losses were generally light, though the strike against Ota’s aircraft plant on February 10 cost a dozen Superforts, only one directly attributable to enemy action. (One crashed on takeoff; two collided; seven ditched; and one disappeared.) The 505th Group was particularly hard hit, losing five planes operationally. Nevertheless, with the new 313th Wing’s four groups, 118 sorties on the Ota strike represented the largest B-29 mission of the war to date.

  Whatever the statistics showed, one inescapable fact stared Curt LeMay in his impassive face: he had destroyed no more targets than Possum Hansell. Something had to change.

  The most obvious factor affecting the command’s performance was totally beyond its control: the weather. The alliance of Pacific currents and frigid winter winds from the Asian landmass produced almost perennial clouds over Japan. Bombardiers could not hit what they could not see, even with radar, which was largely used for navigation. Better equipment was forthcoming, but meanwhile there was another inescapable problem—the damnable jet stream. Little known before the war (it had been discovered by Japanese scientists in the 1920s), the stream’s hellacious winds strewed bombs far and wide when dropped from the doctrinal 27,000 to 30,000 feet. Though a few targets had been hard hit, those missions were the result of unusual circumstances: manageable winds aloft and rare days of good visibility, which occurred perhaps five days a month. Operations analysts computed that 400 B-29s were necessary to destroy an industrial target via high-altitude bombing but LeMay had not yet been able to launch 200. Even if he had more, many were always down for maintenance or repair.

  What to do?

  LeMay put his brain trust to work. The staff sought all manner of information, especially target intelligence, enemy order of battle, and weather data. The latter was hard to come by, and at one point the AAF tried to decipher coded Soviet weather reports, as the Russians seldom shared information with their allies. In any case, cryptanalysis was only marginally useful because, in LeMay’s mind, the Kremlin changed its codes “with diabolical frequency.”

  In China, more than two-thirds of the bombs loaded in B-29s had been high explosives. That figure had remained fairly steady in the first three months of Marianas operations, but in February LeMay and some staffers began questioning the conventional wisdom. He knew that incendiaries had proven unexpectedly effective in the December strike that razed Hankow, and that Tokyo’s construction was much the same—mainly wooden structures.

  Firebombing Japan had been discussed as far back as Billy Mitchell’s heyday in the 1920s and confirmed by prewar attaché reports (see Chapter One). If in fact 90 percent of Tokyo consisted of wood buildings, the entire city was vulnerable to incendiaries.

  After consulting his subordinates, LeMay approved a change of tactics. Small-scale fire raids had been flown against Nagoya (fifty-seven planes on January 3) and Kobe (sixty-nine bombers on February 4). Results were encouraging enough to warrant a bigger test: Mission 38 was scheduled for February 25: the largest incendiary raid yet launched from the Marianas.

  Somehow, the Japanese learned of the forthcoming mission in astonishing detail. The female radio personalities collectively known as Tokyo Rose had long provided unwitting entertainment to American servicemen, but in February the airmen got a shock. Rose astonished the 313th Wing by welcoming one of the 6th Group fliers by name: Captain Edgar McElroy, assuring him a warm welcome from Japan’s finest fighter pilots.

  McElroy was unique in the 20th Air Force in that his first Tokyo mission from Tinian would be his second to the enemy capital. He had flown the Doolittle Raid in 1942 and sustained a serious back injury but returned to flight status. After a practice mission to Truk, McElroy realized that he might be unable to stand fifteen-hour homeland missions but he refused to be put off by Tokyo Rose. The Texan holstered his pearl-handled .45 automatic and prepared to fly Mission 38.

  The command’s three wings established a new record on February 25: 231 Superforts in a daylight high-altitude attack. At the assembly point off the enemy coast, fliers gawked at the sight of so many B-29s inbound, representing an aerial cavalcade of kinetic destruction aimed at the Tokyo urban area. Here was Giulio Douhet’s vision embodied in chilling reality: an unstoppable air fleet aimed directly at the core of the enemy homeland.

  In all, 202 bombers unloaded 454 tons of fire bombs, including thirty planes that attacked alternate targets. The result surpassed most expectations as nearly one square mile of the capital was razed in an unchecked conflagration. The incendiaries fell upon snowy ground throughout the target area, destroying nearly 28,000 structures and leaving 35,000 people homeless. Even the sacrosanct Imperial Palace was violated, with damage to guard barracks, a library, and staff apartments.

  The saturation attack overwhelmed the defenses. Flak was described as “meager” and fighters were “nil.” American casualties were astonishingly light, though the oft-battered 497th Group sustained all three losses. Ed McElroy, the Doolittle Raider, survived his second flight to Tokyo and, still nursing his strained back, soon was rotated stateside.

  The previously unmatched success of Mission 38 proved a turning point in the air war against Japan. It marked almost the hour and minute when XXI Bomber Command turned from high explosives to firebombs as the means of destroying Tokyo’s industry.

  LeMay often is credited with the decision to switch to incendiaries but he later acknowledged that several others in the Marianas and Washington made contributions. Shortly before Hansell left, Norstad had urged Arnold to support “a test incendiary mission” to assess the value of a fire raid on Tokyo.

  But incendiaries were only part of the equation. Planners had recognized the doctrinal importance of mass, with a large enough bombing force to maximize the effects of the fiery weapons. That meant building up the B-29 wings and stockpiling enough ordnance for a sustained effort to overwhelm the defenses for a period of several days.

  The decision to switch from explosives to incendiaries implied a change in targeting: from the first-priority aircraft industry to urban areas. Norstad himself addressed that concern in early January, insisting to Arnold that the test mission represented not so much a targeting shift as “a necessary preparation for the future.” The implication was obvious: once Japan’s aircraft industry was destroyed, the next target set would involve the greater urban-industrial areas and the cottage industries that supporte
d other major manufacturers.

  Another factor in the evolving plan was bombing altitude. LeMay’s operations officer, John Montgomery, already had endorsed “low-level” night missions, though still above 20,000 feet. Others such as wing commanders Rosie O’Donnell and Tommy Power pushed for even lower altitudes, while at least a few in Arnold’s Washington circle later made similar claims. But regardless of who else supported the departure from the doctrine of high-altitude bombing, it was LeMay’s call. Without giving away his intentions, he queried Norstad, “You know General Arnold. I don’t know him. Does he ever go for a gamble?”

  Curt LeMay was playing the game. Knowing the immense pressure Arnold felt to make a success of the B-29, LeMay wanted to keep his chief removed from the line of fire as much as possible in case the gamble went awry. Norstad was noncommittal—he had his own chips on the table—but apparently did not ask specifics. LeMay came away with the impression that “being a little unorthodox was all right with Hap Arnold.”

  In truth, LeMay was thinking far beyond “a little unorthodox.” He was thinking of not merely throwing away the AAF’s playbook, but burning it to cinders—along with Tokyo.

  After concurring with some trusted acolytes, in late February LeMay gave serious thought to a low-level nocturnal fire raid on the enemy capital. However, his concept of low level was totally outré.

  Two decades before, as an Ohio State ROTC cadet, LeMay had studied artillery. He had taken his old manuals with him to England in 1942 and used the tables to compute rough values for the effectiveness of German antiaircraft cannon against bomber formations. Now he dug out his books again and applied that same icy analysis to Japan. The mathematics, combined with his extensive flying experience, told him what he intuitively suspected. A low-level night attack, compressed into minimum time, would present enemy flak gunners with only fleeting targets, speedily ghosting through the dark. At altitudes below 10,000 feet, the heavy guns would be unable to track the bombers that they did see. In that respect, the B-29s would be flying “under the guns.”