Tsuchikura, Hidezo, 150
Tsurgi (Sword), Operation, 241
Tupolev TU-4 “Bull,” 54
20th Air Force, 45, 47, 53, 56, 58, 64, 68, 77, 91, 102, 136, 142, 158–63, 265
atomic bomb and, 231–37, 265–69
captured fliers of, 170–72
postwar operations of, 250–51
21st Fighter Group, 175–76, 181, 182, 184–85, 189
29th Bomb Group, 152, 165, 171
29th Construction Regiment, U.S. Navy, 73
Twining, Nathan, 231
Typhoon McGoon III, 62
U-boats, 2, 7
Ugaki, Matome, 159
Ulithi Atoll, 112
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 89
Utter, Harmon T., 210
Ventura bombers, 274–75
very long range (VLR) escorts, 174–93
Vian, Philip, 205, 206, 221
Vickers, 10
Victoria Cross, 221–22
Victorious, HMS, 205
Victory Through Air Power (Seversky), 22, 280n-81n
Views on the Use of Crash Tactics in Aerial Protection of Vital Defense Areas-No. 2 (JAAF), 40
VII Fighter Command (Sunsetters), 175–93
Vining, Gerald, 92
Vladivostock, U.S.S.R., 6, 54, 61
Wagner, Sam P., 85
Wake Island, 1, 32, 40
Walker, Kenneth N., 19, 21
Walker, William, 89
War Department, U.S., 237
War Plan Orange, 108
Wasp, USS, 112, 118, 119, 125, 130, 215
Watanabe, Yukihiro, 128
Wayne, John, 68
Wedemeyer, Albert, 64
Weller, Oscar “Tex,” 125
Welling, Alvin C., 42
Welsh, John D., 129
Were Wolf, 96
White, Donald, 121
Whitehead, Ennis C., 239
Wildcat (F4F) fighters, 114
Wilson, Donald, 19
Winged Defense (Douhet), 13
Wolf, Fritz E., 114, 117
Wolfe, Kenneth B., 37, 38, 43, 46, 50, 53, 58, 89, 91, 97, 259
Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), 37
World War I, 9–12, 22, 25, 109, 217
World War II:
airbase construction in Pacific in, 68–75, 237–38, 285n
aviators trained in, 79–80
Japanese surrender in, 242–47
Pearl Harbor attack in, 1, 21, 34, 126, 132, 185, 211
strategic bombing casualties in, xvi, 153, 256
U.S. industrial production in, 161, 262
war crimes in, 168, 171–72, 245, 293n, 294n
XB-15 bomber, 14, 34, 35
XB-19 bomber, 14–15, 34
XX Bomber Command, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 52, 56, 61, 63–65, 79, 91, 99
XXI Bomber Command, 56, 59, 63, 77–79, 80, 86, 90, 91, 98, 134, 146, 147, 158–63, 167, 172, 197
captured fliers of, 170–72
firebombing tactic adopted by, 102–3, 142, 154–56
loss rate of, 99–100
postwar missions of, 250–51
Yalta Conference (1945), 234
Yamamoto, Isoroku, 7, 185, 210, 211
Yamato, 126, 131, 132
Yamazaki, Iwao, 173
Yawata, Japan, 50–51, 54–56, 65, 235, 284n
Yokohama, Japan, 5, 143, 172, 185
Yokosuka, Japan, 5, 209–11, 264, 296n
Yokosuka Air Group, 117
York, Edward J. “Ski,” 5, 6, 279n
Yorktown, USS, 114, 117, 127, 244, 249, 250
Yoshida, Kihachiro, 85
Yoshimura, Matake, 215
Zeppelins, 9, 11
Zero (“Zeke”) (A6M) fighters, 80, 83, 86, 95, 116, 117, 125, 128, 185, 192–93, 244–45, 276
Ziel, Chester, 92
About the Author
Barrett Tillman is an internationally recognized authority on air warfare and the author of more than forty books on military topics. The former managing editor of The Hook (the magazine of the Tailhook Association), Tillman has appeared in many television documentaries. He has received six awards for history and literature, including the Admiral Arthur Radford Award. He lives in Mesa, Arizona.
Admirals Chester W. Nimitz (left) and William F. Halsey, key players in the Doolittle Raid against Japan. Nimitz approved the joint Army-Navy operation, and Halsey commanded the two-carrier task force that carried it out.
Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle (center left) and USS Hornet’s Captain Marc A. Mitscher with other Raiders prior to bombing Japan, April 1942.
A B-25 takes off from the Hornet, headed for Tokyo and environs, April 18, 1942. All sixteen bombers safely got off the deck, but fifteen were lost to fuel exhaustion over the China coast. The other landed in Russia.
General Henry H. Arnold (left) of the Army Air Forces and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commanding the U.S. Pacific Fleet. They oversaw grand strategy in the air campaign against Japan, not always in full accord but with unmistakable results.
Army engineers and Navy Seabees literally reshaped the earth to provide level ground for airfields in China and the Mariana Islands. Heavy equipment was used to remove huge boulders and clear enough space for runways to accommodate B-29s.
Rock crushers were used by aviation engineers to provide the base material for runways that would support heavy bombers. The engineers often set up their equipment within days of initial landings on Japanese-occupied islands.
Two of the leading players in the strategic bombing of Japan. Major General Curtis E. LeMay (left) consults with Brigadier General Haywood Hansell on Guam in early 1945. LeMay relieved Hansell, who had conducted initial B-29 operations from the Marianas.
Three B-29s in formation over Kure Arsenal, a major target complex on the Inland Sea. One of the largest naval shipyards in Japan, it was repeatedly attacked by U.S. aircraft in 1945.
The bomb bay view of the war as ordnance falls toward its target, Osaka’s port facilities and warehouses. The city was attacked numerous times, resulting in 35 percent of the urban-industrial area being destroyed.
The cockpit view of the war. Superfortresses approach a target at Kobe that has already been struck, sending a cloud of smoke thousands of feet into the air. More than half the city was razed during B-29 missions.
Air-sea rescue received a high priority in the Marianas bomber command. A crew from a downed B-29 is rescued from the ocean and transported from a destroyer to a seaplane tender.
Lieutenant Isamu Kashiide examines the wreckage of a Superfortress he shot down over Tokyo. He claimed seven B-29s to become recognized as one of the leading B-29 slayers.
Eight of twelve men in Major Sam Bakshas’s crew perished in this crash on March 10, 1945; the others died in captivity. Hidesaburo Kusame, a child at the time, later erected a large monument at the site.
A Japanese cameraman caught the last moments of this Superfortress descending on fire, one of some 400 lost on combat missions in 1944–45.
Admiral William F. Halsey (left) and Vice Admiral John S. McCain, who led the fast carriers. Halsey’s Third Fleet included McCain’s Task Force 38, which conducted most of the U.S. Navy air operations over Japan from May through August 1945.
Namesake of the ship that launched the Doolittle Raiders in 1942, the new Hornet steamed to Japan’s shores three years later, part of the mightiest carrier fleet of all time—Task Force 38/58 under Vice Admirals Mitscher and McCain.
The Fast Carrier Task Force at Ulithi Atoll, 1,300 miles south of Japan. The flattops are anchored in what sailors called “Murderers’ Row,” awaiting departure for the initial series of U.S. Navy attacks on the home islands.
Hellcat fighters prepare to launch from USS Randolph, one of sixteen flattops engaged in the first carrier raids against the Japanese home islands in February 1945.
Kure’s large harbor shielded most of the remaining Japanese fleet in July 1945. Carrier aircraft struck the facility repeatedly that month, sinking or neutraliz
ing several warships but sustaining heavy losses in the process.
The Royal Navy relied heavily upon American aircraft such as the Grumman Hellcat, as sailors relax aboard a Pacific Fleet carrier in 1945. Note the nonstandard roundel with white center, rather than Britain’s usual red center, to avoid confusion with Japanese markings.
“Two navies separated by a common language” explained the differing terminologies of the U.S. and Royal Navies. This Fleet Air Arm “batsman” served the same purpose as American landing signal officers, but during joint operations off Japan, each service mostly continued using its own signals and terms.
Lacking modern carrier fighters designed for the role, the Royal Navy modified RAF aircraft such as the Supermarine Spitfire, resulting in “navalised” seagoing versions. The Seafire possessed excellent performance but, as shown aboard HMS Implacable, often lacked the ruggedness to withstand the rigors typical of flight-deck operations.
Iwo Jima from the south. Five miles long and less than three wide, the island was conquered at the expense of 6,000 American lives. Few of the 20,000 Japanese defenders survived. Halfway between the Marianas and Japan, Iwo was the only possible base for U.S. fighters to escort B-29s.
The 46th Fighter Squadron’s blue-nosed Mustangs warming up for a mission to Japan. The pierced steel planking was necessary because of Iwo Jima’s ashy surface.
A silent testament to courage. The driver of this grader drove into a burning fighter on Iwo Jima to clear the wreckage off the runway so that airborne pilots could land.
A crashed Superfortress burns on Iwo Jima, narrowly missing a squadron of Mustangs parked alongside the runway.
Brig. Gen. Mickey Moore (center) hears from two P-51 pilots just returned from Iwo Jima’s first escort mission to Japan. Captains Harry Crim and DeWitt Spain were flight leaders on the mission of April 7, 1945.
On August 9, 1945, Okinawa-based B-25s attacked the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaiyo moored in Beppu Bay, Kyushu. The lead bomber was shot down with loss of the entire crew. This sequence shows the B-25 crash, with the camouflaged carrier in the upper left background.
Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the atomic research and development program at Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1943–1945. His team of physicists and scientists produced the world’s first nuclear weapons in barely two years.
Members of the Los Alamos brain trust. Left to right: Ernest O. Lawrence (1939 Nobel for the cyclotron); Italian Enrico Fermi (1938 Nobel for research on radioactivity); and Austrian-born Isidor I. Rabi (1944 Nobel for Physics).
The B-29 Enola Gay preparing to load “Little Boy,” the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The aircraft is being backed over the loading pit where the weapon will be raised into the bomb bay.
Destined for Nagasaki, the plutonium bomb called “Fat Man” on its cart prior to loading in the B-29 Bocks Car. The 10,200-pound weapon yielded about 20 kilotons of explosive power, considerably more than the Hiroshima bomb.
Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The distinctive mushroom cloud obscures much of the city, largely destroyed in the second atomic attack ever undertaken. Faced with such massive destruction, Japan capitulated six days later.
The gateway of a Shinto shrine is one of the few structures left standing after the B-29 Bocks Car delivered a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki.
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