Bombers Over Japan

Bombers Over Japan PDF Author: Keith Wheeler
Publisher: Time Life Medical
ISBN: 9780783557052
Category : B-29 (Bomber)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Profusely illustrated text documents the decisive part played by bombers in bringing about the ultimate capitulation of Japan in World War II.

Bombers Over Japan

Bombers Over Japan PDF Author: Keith Wheeler
Publisher: Time Life Medical
ISBN: 9780783557052
Category : B-29 (Bomber)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Profusely illustrated text documents the decisive part played by bombers in bringing about the ultimate capitulation of Japan in World War II.

Blankets of Fire

Blankets of Fire PDF Author: Kenneth P. Werrell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : B-29 bomber
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description


Bombers Over Japan

Bombers Over Japan PDF Author: Keith Wheeler
Publisher: Time Life Medical
ISBN: 9780809434275
Category : B-29 (Bomber)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Profusely illustrated text documents the decisive part played by bombers in bringing about the ultimate capitulation of Japan in World War II.

BLANKETS OF FIRE

BLANKETS OF FIRE PDF Author: WERRELL KENNETH P
Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
When the focus of World War II shifted to the Pacific in 1944, the Army Air Forces (AAF), equipped with the new, longer-range B-29 bomber, tried to shift strategic bombing tactics as well. Blankets of Fire describes the adjustments necessary to target Japan and places them in the context of overall AAF and wartime strategy. 58 photos.

Whirlwind

Whirlwind PDF Author: Barrett Tillman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416585028
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
WHIRLWIND is the first book to tell the complete, awe-inspiring story of the Allied air war against Japan—the most important strategic bombing campaign inhistory. From the audacious Doolittle raid in 1942 to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, award-winning historian Barrett Tillman recounts the saga from the perspectives of American and British aircrews who flew unprecedented missions overthousands of miles of ocean, as well as of the generalsand admirals who commanded them. Whether describing the experiences of bomber crews based in China or the Marianas, fighter pilotson Iwo Jima, or carrier aviators at sea, Tillman provides vivid details of the lives of the fliers and their support personnel. Whirlwind takes readers into the cockpits and gun turrets of the mighty B-29 Superfortress, the largest bomber built up to that time. Tillman dramatically re-creates the sweep of wartime emotions that crews endured on fifteen-hour missions, grappling with the extreme tedium of cramped spaces and with adrenaline spikes in flak-studded skies, knowing that a bailout would put them at the mercy of a merciless enemy or an unforgiving sea. A major character is the controversial and brilliant General Curtis LeMay, who rewrote strategic bombing tactics. His command’s fire-bombing missions incinerated fully half of Tokyo and many other cities, crippling Japan’s industry while still failing to force surrender. Whirlwind examines the immense logistics and construction efforts necessary to support Superfortresses in Asia and the Mariana Islands, as well as the tireless efforts of engineers to build huge air bases from scratch.It also describes the unheralded missions that American bomber crews flew from the Aleutian Islands to Japan’s northernmost Kuril Islands. Never has the Japanese side of the story been so thoroughly examined. If Washington, D.C., represented a “second front” in Army-Navy rivalry, the situation in Tokyo approached a full-contact sport. Tillman’s description of Japan’s willfully inadequate approach to civil defense is eye-opening. Similarly, he examines the mind-set in Tokyo’s war cabinet, which ignored the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, requiring the emperor’s personal intervention to avert a ghastly Allied invasion. Tillman shows how, despite the Allies’ ultimate success, mistakes and shortsighted policies made victory more costly in lives and effort. He faults the lack of a unified command for allowing the Army Air Forces and the Navy to pursue parochial goals at the expense of the larger mission, and he questions the premature commitment of the enormously sophisticated B-29 to the most primitive theater in India and China. Whirlwind is one of the last histories of World War II written with the contribution of men who fought in it.With unexcelled macro- and microperspectives, Whirlwind is destined to become a standard reference on the war, on multiservice operations, and on the human capacity for individual heroism and national folly.

Inferno

Inferno PDF Author: Edwin P. Hoyt
Publisher: Madison Books
ISBN: 1461704200
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Did the bombing of Japan's cities—culminating in the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—hasten the end of World War II? Edwin Hoyt, World War II scholar and author, argues against the U. S. justification of the bombing. In his new book, Inferno, Hoyt shows how the U. S. bombed without discrimination, hurting Japanese civilians far more than the Japanese military. Hoyt accuses Major General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force leader who helped plan the destruction of Dresden, of committing a war crime through his plan to burn Japan's major cities to the ground. The firebombing raids conducted by LeMay's squadrons caused far more death than the two atomic blasts. Throughout cities built largely from wood, incendiary bombs started raging fires that consumed houses and killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. The survivors of the raids recount their stories in Inferno, remembering their terror as they fled to shelter through burning cities, escaping smoke, panicked crowds, and collapsing buildings. Hoyt's descriptions of the widespread death and destruction of Japan depicts a war machine operating without restraint. Inferno offers a provocative look at what may have been America's most brutal policy during the years of World War II.

Fist from the Sky

Fist from the Sky PDF Author: Peter C. Smith
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 9780811733304
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
- Fascinating look from the Japanese side at Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway - Fully authorized account including contemporary interviews with those that flew with Lt. Cdr. Egusa Lieutenant Commander Takashige Egusa was one of the Imperial Japanese Navy's most skillful and influential dive-bomber pilots. He led an attack force against Pearl Harbor, calmly circling his special flame-red Aichi dive bomber before selecting his target. Assaults on the deadly gun batteries of Wake Island followed, as well as air support for the invasion of Ambon. Badly burned at Midway, Egusa returned to duty, only to be killed on his final mission. As one Japanese officer said, "He was the 'God of Dive-Bombing.'" Fully placed in historical context and backed by a wealth of detail from archives, family records, photographs, and memories of contemporaries, the full story of Egusa's bravery, leadership qualities, and illustrious career comes to life.

Mission to Tokyo

Mission to Tokyo PDF Author: Robert F. Dorr
Publisher: Zenith Press
ISBN: 0760341222
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
From Hell Hawks! author Bob Dorr, Mission to Tokyo takes the reader on a World War II strategic bombing mission from an airfield on the western Pacific island of Tinian to Tokyo and back. Told in the veterans' words, Mission to Tokyo is a narrative of every aspect of long range bombing, including pilots and other aircrew, groundcrew, and escort fighters that accompanied the heavy bombers on their perilous mission. Several thousand men on the small Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian were trying to take the war to the Empire—Imperial Japan—in B-29 Superfortresses flying at 28,000 feet, but the high-altitude bombing wasn't very accurate. The decision was made to take the planes down to around 8,000 feet, even as low as 5,000 feet. Eliminating the long climb up would save fuel, and allow the aircraft to take heavier bomb loads. The lower altitude would also increase accuracy substantially. The trade-off was the increased danger of anti-aircraft fire. This was deemed worth the risk, and the devastation brought to the industry and population of the capital city was catastrophic. Unfortunately for all involved, the bombing did not bring on the quick surrender some had hoped for. That would take six more months of bombing, culminating in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As with Mission to Berlin (Spring 2011), Mission to Tokyo focuses on a specific mission from spring 1945 and provides a history of the strategic air war against Japan in alternating chapters.

Japan 1944–45

Japan 1944–45 PDF Author: Mark Lardas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472832477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
The air campaign that incinerated Japan's cities was the first and only time that independent air power has won a war. As the United States pushed Imperial Japan back towards Tokyo Bay, the US Army Air Force deployed the first of a new bomber to the theater. The B-29 Superfortress was complex, troubled, and hugely advanced. It was the most expensive weapons system of the war, and formidably capable. But at the time, no strategic bombing campaign had ever brought about a nation's surrender. Not only that, but Japan was half a world away, and the US had no airfields even within the extraordinary range of the B-29. This analysis explains why the B-29s struggled at first, and how General LeMay devised radical and devastating tactics that began to systematically incinerate Japanese cities and industries and eliminate its maritime trade with aerial mining. It explains how and why this campaign was so uniquely successful, and how gaps in Japan's defences contributed to the B-29s' success.

Japan 1944–45

Japan 1944–45 PDF Author: Mark Lardas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472832485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
The air campaign that incinerated Japan's cities was the first and only time that independent air power has won a war. As the United States pushed Imperial Japan back towards Tokyo Bay, the US Army Air Force deployed the first of a new bomber to the theater. The B-29 Superfortress was complex, troubled, and hugely advanced. It was the most expensive weapons system of the war, and formidably capable. But at the time, no strategic bombing campaign had ever brought about a nation's surrender. Not only that, but Japan was half a world away, and the US had no airfields even within the extraordinary range of the B-29. This analysis explains why the B-29s struggled at first, and how General LeMay devised radical and devastating tactics that began to systematically incinerate Japanese cities and industries and eliminate its maritime trade with aerial mining. It explains how and why this campaign was so uniquely successful, and how gaps in Japan's defences contributed to the B-29s' success.