{"id":13440,"date":"2021-05-22T09:12:09","date_gmt":"2021-05-22T16:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=13440"},"modified":"2021-05-22T09:12:15","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T16:12:15","slug":"historians-corner-the-firebombing-of-japan-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/historians-corner-the-firebombing-of-japan-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Historian’s Corner: The Firebombing of Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part Three. The Nihilist Logic of Death<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Once the sick dogs of war are unleashed, legalized murder has a Satanic logic of its own. In the US case, the agenda from December 8 onward was how to end the war as quickly as possible that it did not start and had tried to avoid through appeasement and isolationism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of Japan and its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (a more brutal but eerie forerunner of the Chinese Belt-and-Road initiative), its war machine was an engine of murder\u2014and fueled from the Japanese mainland. And it was the mainland, that is Tokyo, that the US military from the outset of the war had wished to target, on the theory that decapitating the head of the octopus would render inert its murderous tentacles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

So the daring engineers created a radically different bomber to leap frog over the empire\u2019s assets and, from a long and safe distance, destroy the source of Japanese bombs, shells, planes, ships, and guns\u2014the agents of death\u2014that had been unleashed against Asia and the Pacific for years before December 7th<\/sup>. Yet after investing $2 billion and witnessing the B-17 unfortunate experience between 1942-4, the B-29 was proving to be a colossal failure. There was no such thing as \u201cprecision bombing,\u201d especially when buffeted amid a 50-100 mph jet stream, and occasional crosswinds, over cloudy Tokyo, with time over target of about 5-10 minutes, at 25,000 feet above\u2014flying for eight hours, with another eight hours to get back home\u2014all over the empty Pacific (before the capture of Iwo Jima).\u00a0\u00a0Uppers and downers were needed to keep the crews going for the 16-hour trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the B-29 suffered from mechanical problems, crew exhaustion, the dangers of taking off in an overloaded plane, the difficulty of navigating by night over hundreds of miles of empty ocean, the anticipated missions of a slow, and often difficult climb to over 25,000 feet, and Japanese fighters and flak. It is misleading, as Ernie Pyle once noted, to call a B-29 sortie a \u201cmilk run.\u201d (The rate of loss differed from bomber group to bomber group). True, about 1-2 percent of the planes were lost on an average mission, called the \u201cSortie Loss Rate\u201d or more bluntly the chance of dying on any given mission. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the minimum requirement of at least 35 missions meant that a crew could expect, at best, a\u00a0one in three chance of never making it home<\/em>. As a child, I remember going through my father\u2019s mission book of the 504th<\/sup>\u00a0Bombardment Group, looking at some 40-50 plane decals and artwork and asking about the planes in his squadron (e.g. \u201cDid Thumper make it?\u201d \u201cHow about \u2014\u2014?\u201d And so on and on.) He usually said, \u201cNope\u2026that one didn\u2019t get through\u201d and then added short qualifiers like \u201cflak,\u201d \u201clost,\u201d \u201ccrashed on take-off,\u201d \u201cshot down,\u201d \u201cblew up,\u201d \u201cburned up on Iwo\u2026,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So put all of this in context: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Americans in Spring 1945, their bloodiest months of the war, had no real hope other than strategic bombing, whether conventional or perhaps eventually nuclear, to defeat Japan\u2014unless they were to replay, at a 100-fold increase, Iwo Jima and Okinawa on the mainland. I omit the now popular idea of discussions of a negotiated armistice, given that the regime\u2019s unconditional surrender was required to discredit and humiliate Japanese militarism, and to offer a different postwar trajectory, with face-saving retention of a culpable emperor under a constitutional system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American planners\u2019 dream of a \u201cSuperfortress\u201d\u2014what the Flying Fortress was supposed to have been\u2014stocked with computerized and centrally controlled override guns, fast, pressurized, invincible at nearly 30,000 feet, with a ten-ton, high-explosive bomb load, capable of flying 3,200 miles, and masterminded by an improved \u201ctop secret\u201d Norden bombsight\u2014proved a bomber fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Curtis LeMay, a coarse, blunt but authentic military genius, recalibrated the B-29, in violation of all its supposed strengths and assets, into a fast, low-level attack, night\u2014huge 4-engine\u2014bomber. And the resulting nightmarish inferno that was unleashed haunts us today, even though in the six months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki the bombers had all but destroyed Japanese war production and shortened the war. We naturally might doubt that two atomic bombs would have in isolation shocked Japan so quickly into surrender had its cities and industries remained untouched until August 1945. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan sowed the winds of war with its atrocities, and reaped history\u2019s most lethal single day whirlwind. But the ferocity of the latter, 76 years later, makes us, of a more affluent, safer and leisured world, wish that somehow we could have been New Testament rather than Old Testament warriors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then again, the ghosts of those of Nanking or at Bataan, or who surrendered at Singapore, or of those rounded up in China after the Doolittle raid, or of the South Korean comfort women, or of the quarter-million subject to Japanese military crude lab experiments, or of the survivors of the Manilla, Borneo, and Malay massacres\u2014might, well, beg to differ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers Part Three. The Nihilist Logic of Death Once the sick dogs of war are unleashed, legalized murder has a Satanic logic of its own. In the US case, the agenda from December 8 onward was how to end the war as quickly as possible that it did not start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3uM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13414,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/historians-corner-the-firebombing-of-japan-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":13440,"position":0},"title":"Historian’s Corner: The Firebombing of Japan","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"B-29 Superfortress Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers Part Two:\u00a0Very Bad Versus Worse Choices? 1) The Japanese Empire, while doomed in Spring 1945, was more than capable of killing thousands of innocents every day the war dragged on. Depending on the nature of particular sources, and how data are compiled\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 10 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 10 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/historians-corner-the-firebombing-of-japan-2\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/B29Bomber-e1621482082162.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/B29Bomber-e1621482082162.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/B29Bomber-e1621482082162.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/B29Bomber-e1621482082162.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1741,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/remembering-the-pacific-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":13440,"position":1},"title":"Remembering the Pacific War","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Today marks the 65th anniversary of the invasion of Okinawa. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Sixty-five years ago, on April 1, 1945, the United States Marines, Army, and Navy invaded Okinawa. The ensuing three months of combat resulted in the complete defeat and near destruction of imperial Japanese\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10684,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-deadly-cost-of-mutual-misunderstanding\/","url_meta":{"origin":13440,"position":2},"title":"The Deadly Cost of Mutual Misunderstanding","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 Hitler went to war without an accurate conception of the Allies\u2019 strength. The Allies did the same without an accurate conception of Hitler\u2019s ambition. Unprecedented bloodshed ensued. 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We see the sad\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2002"","block_context":{"text":"March 2002","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2002\/march-2002\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7998,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/comparing-the-war-on-terror-with-wwii\/","url_meta":{"origin":13440,"position":4},"title":"Comparing the ‘war on terror’ with WWII","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ World Net Daily Over the years I\u2019ve debated scholars and pundits on issues ranging from illegal immigration (no to open borders), George Bush\u2019s troop levels in Iraq (don\u2019t add and don\u2019t subtract, but change tactics and force the Iraqis to step up), and World War\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Pearl Harbor via WND)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/PearlHarbor-1-500x279.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3737,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-pearl-harbor\/","url_meta":{"origin":13440,"position":5},"title":"Our Pearl Harbor","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services On Dec. 7, 1941 \u2014 65 years ago this week \u2014 pilots from a Japanese carrier force bombed Pearl Harbor. They killed 2,403 Americans, most of them service personnel, while destroying much of the American fleet and air forces stationed in Hawaii. 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