Whirlwind

by Barrett Tillman

  Much—perhaps most—of the criticism of 1945 U.S. military policy seems imposed by post-Vietnam attitudes rather than in context of World War II. In that regard the debate about use of the A-bomb, and bombing generally, resulted in a peculiar inversion. The Japanese, who embarked upon a brutal war of conquest, were increasingly cast as victims while the Americans who responded to that action became the aggressors. Thus was born the concept of “equivalency,” with the response to the war makers somehow becoming as objectionable as the actions that launched the aggression.

  The voices protesting the use of nuclear weapons spanned the political spectrum: from scientists who helped produce the bombs to some of America’s most senior military leaders. Since many of the Los Alamos personnel were refugees from Occupied Europe, their prime motivation had been to produce a weapon before Hitler did. Once Nazi Germany collapsed, presumably the need for A-bombs diminished. But those opposed to using A-bombs against Japan reckoned without Tokyo’s samurai zeal for national extinction.

  Among the postwar critics of the bombs was Admiral Ernest King, the chief of naval operations. Widely known for his abrasive personality (“When they get into trouble they call for the sons of bitches”), his alleged moral objections to nuclear weapons appear disingenuous at best, only appearing after the fact. Certainly he had no qualms about ordering his submarines to violate international law by sinking Japanese merchant ships without warning—the only effective tactic. His seeming preference for blockade and/or invasion also falls afoul of the 5,000 kamikazes his fleet would have faced in late 1945. Far more likely he issued his statements with an eye toward the forthcoming battle over creating an independent air force rather than any queasiness about killing the enemy.

  Meanwhile, the moral question about atomic weapons was shared at other rarefied levels. Former President Herbert Hoover and General Dwight D. Eisenhower believed that Tokyo was on the verge of surrender, even though Japanese documents (to say nothing of actions) clearly show otherwise. Yet the presidents’ ethically based if ill-informed opposition to the bombs is still widely quoted.

  Little discussed is the fact that in June 1943 Hirohito had directed his prime minister to ask the army and navy general staffs where they planned to stop the Americans. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo’s adviser, General Kenryu Sato, accurately replied, “Neither the Army nor the Navy can possibly draw up a plan to stop them.” Yet Japan persisted more than two years.

  Nevertheless, the victims of American bombings also were heard. U.S. Army radio monitors picked up part of a Radio Tokyo broadcast in 1945: “‘Blind’ bombing or ‘indiscriminate’—these expressions have appeared in our official communiqués but are now regarded as a gross misnomer in describing the enemy’s savage attacks.” Fifty years later the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki compared the atomic bombings to the Holocaust. They found support among those Americans who frame the debate on behalf of Japan, an approach intellectually crippling and objectively flawed. With the war’s instigators receiving a pass from the anti-atomic perspective, Tokyo is cast as victim rather than perpetrator and owner of the nation’s fate.

  The pattern is clear: Japan’s warlords remained unconcerned about their people’s suffering. Having deceived the population for years, announcing one triumph after another even as the front lines drew inexorably nearer their own shores, Japan’s leaders displayed stunning indifference toward 70 million industrious, devoted subjects.

  Only after the trip-hammer blows of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Soviet declaration of war coming in rapid-fire sequence did the emperor intervene and override his doom-laden cabinet. One has to wonder why he did not do so five months earlier, when he sniffed the ash-strewn wind whipping round the Imperial Palace, bearing the stench of 85,000 charred corpses.

  Defenders of the atomic bombings stress the lives saved on both sides in avoiding blockade or invasion. Those spared included hundreds of thousands to millions of Japanese who escaped death by starvation—let alone in an invasion—and tens of thousands of Allied POWs who almost certainly would have been killed. Moreover, those spared included an immense number of Asians—perhaps 100,000 or more per month in China alone—who were dying of disease, famine, and brutality.

  Japan’s senior civilian leaders acknowledged the primacy of airpower in forcing capitulation. Prince Konoye said, “Fundamentally the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s.” Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki agreed, adding, “On top of the B-29 raids came the atomic bomb, issued after the Potsdam Declaration, which was just one additional reason for giving in . . . and gave us the opportune moment to open negotiations for peace.” His reference to “us” was only partly true since most of the military preferred to continue the war. But it did accurately state the position of the one human whose opinion mattered most—the emperor of Japan.

  Epitaph

  So the airmen had their victory, but it represented far more than the defeat of Imperial Japan. To Arnold, Spaatz, LeMay, and others, the B-29 had more than justified its $2.5 billion cost because its success set the stage for an independent air arm. Consequently, the end of World War II launched another conflict: postwar arguments about the relative effectiveness of land- and carrier-based airpower with an eye toward the emerging Army-Navy rivalry for postwar funds and missions. Looming hugely was the airmen’s surging confidence that they deserved a separate service, equal to the Army and the Navy. They finally got it in 1947, with the United States Air Force.

  The fliers who bombed Japan provided leadership to the Air Force and Navy for the next thirty years. LeMay and Thomas Power led the Strategic Air Command—America’s primary nuclear war-fighting arm—and LeMay commanded the entire Air Force from 1961 to 1965. Marc Mitscher, who led the fast carriers most of the war, earned a promotion to full admiral before dying in 1947.

  Others fared less well. In 1954 physicist Robert Oppenheimer of the Manhattan Project was suspected for earlier Communist affiliations and lost his security clearance. Paul Tibbets was excoriated by leftists and pacifists for destroying Hiroshima. Harry Truman was second-guessed by two generations of historians and pundits who insist that he only permitted use of the bomb to impress the Soviets.

  Some Japanese disagree. They recognize that the war cabinet was determined to go down fighting, and that an Allied invasion would have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths. Despite Hirohito’s involvement in conducting the war, he did the right thing by overriding his most fanatical samurai.

  In the end, the theories presented by Douhet, Mitchell, and others were alternately proven and refuted. Belief in the power of strategic bombardment to end a war quickly was clearly optimistic. So was the contention that heavy civilian casualties would force a capitulation: it was no more true in democratic Britain than in authoritarian Japan, though the scale of destruction was far different.

  However, airpower’s effect upon the enemy’s ability to wage war outstripped its psychological influence. In early 1945 Japan was starving for food and fuel. The first major fire raid in March left sixteen square miles of Tokyo in ruins, with no prospect for preventing additional destruction. But five more months of even heavier bombing were required before Japan’s leaders finally had enough.

  Though the war ended in 1945, in a real sense it continues today. The decades-long atomic bombing debate peaked in 1993–95 when the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum sparked enormous controversy over a fiftieth anniversary display built around the Enola Gay. The proposed script’s treatment of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki largely ignored the rising toll of American casualties as the war had continued, and chose to cast the atomic bombs as revenge for Pearl Harbor. The lack of context outraged many Americans—whose taxes fund the museum—for the perception of moral equivalency in the wartime actions of the United States and Japan. Veterans and military historians were angered by the text’s self-righteous tone and the reluctance of the curators responsible for the exhibit to include suc
h objections. With increasing involvement by veterans’ groups and the Air Force Association, the U.S. Senate reviewed the text and declared it “revisionist and offensive to many World War II veterans.” The result was the forced resignation of the director of the National Air and Space Museum (an astronomer rather than historian) and reduction of the proposed exhibit. Though only part of the Enola Gay was displayed, it drew 4 million visitors in three years. Today the famous bomber is fully assembled at the museum’s Dulles, Virginia, facility, testament to an air campaign unlike anything before, and never to be seen again.

  Appendix A

  THE UNKNOWN WAR

  After the Doolittle Raid in April 1942 Japan was immune to air attack for fifteen months. When American aircraft reappeared they operated in a remote area, from an even remoter source.

  The Kuril Islands comprised the northernmost portion of Japan, nearly 1,500 miles from Tokyo and therefore not considered part of the homeland. Well beyond Hokkaido, bisected by the 50th parallel, the isles were typically cold, fogbound, and of only marginal interest to American strategists. But the Kurils possessed one invaluable asset: they were within range of bombers in the Aleutians. Even then it was a long stretch—more than 700 miles across the North Pacific.

  In July 1943 the Alaska-based 11th Air Force launched its first attack on the Kurils, striking Paramushiru Island. The early efforts were literally hit-and-miss affairs, as attackers necessarily dropped bombs through solid cloud layers. A large mission involved nine B-24s.

  The Japanese were the least of the Aleutian airmen’s problems. The weather was a perennial enemy, possessing numerous ways to kill an unwary or unlucky crew. Visibility frequently ranged from bad to zero, with mountains stuffed inside of clouds. The maritime atmosphere could choke a carburetor or overload a wing with ice, and there were few navigation aids. If a plane went down at sea, prospects for rescue were considered twofold: grim and none. Those who didn’t drown would freeze to death in ten minutes.

  Nevertheless, the 11th Air Force pressed ahead. With more assets dribbling into the neglected theater, the command prepared a maximum effort on September 11. A dozen Mitchells and eight Liberators attacked shipping and facilities, claiming five vessels sunk or damaged and thirteen interceptors downed. Both figures were exaggerated, but the American losses were real enough: seven B-25s destroyed and two B-24s lost when they landed in Russia.

  An operational summary called September 11 “the most disastrous day for the Eleventh Air Force.” Flying in the Aleutians weather factory was bad enough—sometimes nearly as many missions aborted as got through. But heavy Japanese defenses forced a rethinking. The new air commander, Major General Davenport Johnson, suspended Kurils missions for five months.

  That summer the Japanese began paying more attention to their northern flank. In August the Imperial Navy established the Northeast Area Fleet, responsible for Hokkaido and the Kurils. Three months later some 260 army and navy aircraft were based in the region but the number steadily declined. By the spring of 1945 it was reduced to twenty army and navy aircraft with some 27,000 men.

  Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy began attacking the Kurils with “Empire Express” missions by Fleet Air Wing Four, commanded by ascerbic, erratic Captain Leslie Gehres, who insisted on using Catalina patrol planes like B-17s. In December 1943, Catalinas initiated night bombing and reconnaissance missions over the Kurils, replaced in February 1944 with faster, better-armed Ventura bombers.

  When AAF operations resumed that month, the 11th Air Force’s offensive arm largely comprised two squadrons: B-25s on Attu and B-24s on Shemya. Additionally, two P-38 squadrons occasionally provided long-range escort.

  Even after resuming Kurils missions, AAF emphasis was on reconnaissance—both photographic and radar mapping. Specially equipped Liberators periodically deployed from distant Colorado Springs while electronic “ferret” B-24s snooped for Japanese radar installations.

  Offensive missions accelerated in the summer of 1945, with AAF and Navy aircraft occasionally operating together. On June 9, Army bombers covered a naval force bombarding the Kurils (almost a monthly event), but Japanese fighters intercepted the B-25s. Two Mitchells veered over Soviet territory, both being shot down with one crew killed.

  The 11th Air Force logged its last bombing missions and final combat losses in June 1945. By then Fleet Air Wing Four had grown to five squadrons flying Consolidated Catalinas and Liberators plus Lockheed Venturas and Harpoons.

  The fliers who made the long, perilous “Empire Express” runs possessed a special kind of motivation. They were unheralded, consigned to a secondary (some said tertiary) campaign, forced to operate with pitifully small forces. But for two years they plied their trade despite all that nature and the Japanese Empire could muster against them. In perhaps no other air operations of World War II did survival constitute such a victory.

  Appendix B

  JAPANESE AIRCRAFT

  BY ALLIED CODE NAMES

  (DATE OF FIRST FLIGHT)

  Betty Mitsubishi G4M Isshikirikk (Type 1 Land Attack). Navy twin-engine patrol bomber, typically with 7-man crew. 1939.

  Fran/Frances Yokosuka P1Y Ginga (Milky Way). Navy twin-engine attack/reconnaissance bomber with 3-man crew. 1943.

  Frank Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate (Gale). Army single-engine, single-seat fighter. 1943.

  George Kawanishi N1K Shiden (Violet Lightning). Navy single-engine, single-seat fighter. 1942.

  Irving Nakajima J1N Gekko (Moonlight). Navy twin-engine, two-seat night fighter. 1941.

  Jack Mitsubishi J2M Raiden (Thunderbolt). Navy single-engine, single-seat fighter. 1942.

  Nick Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu (Dragon). Army twin-engine, two-seat interceptor and reconnaissance plane. 1941.

  Oscar Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (Peregrine Falcon). Army single-engine, single-seat fighter. 1939.

  Tojo Nakajima Ki-44 Shoki (Devil Queller). Army single-engine, single-seat fighter. 1940.

  Tony Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien (Swallow). Army single-engine, single-seat fighter. 1941.

  Zeke Mitsubishi A6M Reisen (Zero Fighter). Navy single-engine, single-seat fighter. 1939.

  Acknowledgments

  VETERANS (RANKS AS OF 1945)

  First Lieutenant Sandy Arnell

  29th Bomb Group, Guam

  Lieutenant Malcolm W. Cagle

  VF-88, USS Yorktown (d. 2003)

  Sergeant Howard Chamberlain

  504th Bomb Group, Tinian

  Lieutenant (jg) John H. Christiansen

  VBF-16, USS Randolph (d. 2008)

  First Lieutenant Charles M. Crawford

  38th Bomb Group, Okinawa

  Major Harry C. Crim

  21st Fighter Group, Iwo Jima (d. 1994)

  Captain Jack DeTour

  38th Bomb Group, Okinawa

  Sergeant Henry E. Erwin

  29th Bomb Group, Guam (d. 2002)

  Second Lieutenant Donald A. Gerth

  39th Bomb Group, Tinian

  First Lieutenant R. F. “Hap” Halloran

  499th Bomb Group, Saipan

  Lieutenant (jg) Willis E. Hardy

  VF-17, USS Hornet

  Lieutenant Commander Roger Hedrick

  VF-84, USS Bunker Hill (d. 2006)

  First Lieutenant Bedford M. Hertel

  27th Troop Carrier Squadron, China (d. 1997)

  Lieutenant Commander W. N. Leonard

  Task Force 38 staff (d. 2005)

  Lieutenant Hamilton McWhorter, Jr.

  VF-12, USS Randolph (d. 2006)

  Brigadier General Ernest M. Moore

  VII Fighter Command, Iwo Jima (d. 1981)

  Sergeant Virgil Morgan

  6th Bomb Group, Tinian

  First Lieutenant Harvey Phipps

  21st Fighter Group, Iwo Jima

  Lieutenant (jg) Robert S. Rice

  VBF-3, USS Yorktown (d. 2007)

  Lieutenant Armistead B. Smith III

  VBF-12, USS Randolph (d. 2000)

  First Lieutenant Neil Smith, Jr.
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br />   506th Fighter Group, Iwo Jima

  First Lieutenant Robert Stevens

  348th Fighter Group, le Shima (d. 1994)

  Colonel Clay Tice, Jr.

  49th Fighter Group, Okinawa (d. 1998)

  CONTRIBUTORS

  All the regulars at J-Aircraft.com; Tom Behrens, 38th Bomb Group Association; Colonel Walter J. Boyne, USAF (Ret); Alan Concepcion; W. David Dickson; Robert F. Dorr; Richard L. Dunn; Edward Fahey, FDNY; Andrew Farmer; Richard B. Frank; Orland F. Gage, 38th Bomb Group Association; Phil Gentry, USS Franklin Association; Dennis Giangreco; C. V. Glines; Frank Grube; Dr. Richard P. Hallion; Bob Kattenheim, USS Shangri-La Association; Don Kehn, Jr.; Dr. Arnold Krammer; Dr. John T. Kuehn; Rich Leonard; Jim Long; Kirk Lowry, Theaerodrome.com; Chuck Lynch; Nancy Macaulay; Helen McDonald and Reagan Grau, National Museum of the Pacific War (special thanks); Roger Mansell; Donald Nijboer; Don Norton (special thanks); Seth Paridon, National WWII Museum (special thanks); Lucy Price, London Fire Brigade; Ronald W. Russell (special thanks); Henry Sakaida (special thanks); Taeko Sasamoto; Dale Sauter, East Carolina University; Dr. M. G. Sheftall; Commander Doug Siegfried, USN (Ret), Tailhook Association; Jody Smith; Joseph A. Springer; Doug Sterner, Home of Heroes; Iain Stewart; John C. Sullivan, Office of Air Force History; Osamu “Sam” Tagaya; John L. Tillman; Anthony P. Tully, Robert von Maier, World War II Quarterly; Sallyann Wagoner, B-29.org; and Pete Wyler, 39th Bomb Group Association.