by Jon Erwin
LeMay knew he was on the verge of ordering a civilian bloodbath the likes of which the world had never seen, but he saw no other path to victory. He was not a bloodthirsty man, but he was resigned to the tragic inevitability of what seemed necessary to make an intractable foe surrender.
“No matter how you slice it,”24 he told himself, “you’re going to kill an awful lot of civilians. Thousands and thousands. But if you don’t destroy Japanese industry, we’re going to have to invade Japan. And how many Americans will be killed in an invasion? Five hundred thousand seems to be the lowest estimate. We’re at war with Japan. Would you rather have Americans killed?”
The chief fire-starting weapon in the US arsenal was the M-69 incendiary bomblet, which was filled with the highly flammable gasoline jelly called napalm, which had been developed by Harvard chemists and produced by Dow Chemical. The bombs had one purpose: to start uncontrollable fires.
“Dropped in loose clusters of 14,25 or ‘amiable’ clusters of 38, the finless oil-bombs are exploded by a time fuse four or five seconds after landing,” Time magazine reported in 1945. “Thereupon M-69s become miniature flamethrowers that hurl cheesecloth socks full of furiously flaming goo for 100 yards. Anything these socks hit is enveloped by clinging, fiery pancakes, each spreading to more than a yard in diameter. Individually, these can be extinguished as easily as a magnesium bomb. But a single oil-bomb cluster produces so many fiery pancakes that the problem for fire fighters, like that of a mother whose child has got loose in the jam pot, is where to begin.”
Napalm was a devastating weapon against wooden targets, such as much of Japan’s houses and buildings. And it caused severe burn wounds on human beings. Using incendiary bombs meant that fires would spread into civilian areas near military targets, and until now, the Allies had largely avoided bombing civilian areas in the Asian and Pacific theaters.
On February 25, 1945, as an experiment, LeMay sent 230 B-29s, including the City of Los Angeles, on the first massive firebombing raid against a Japanese target. It was a daylight attack from an altitude of 25,000 feet, releasing 400 tons of incendiary bombs on the Kanda and Shitaya Wards of Tokyo, where many small-and medium-sized factories were believed to be. Some planes turned back due to mechanical trouble, severe winds, and heavy clouds, but 172 bombers made it to their targets and completed the mission.
It was a disappointing first mission for Red Erwin and the City of Los Angeles. Their bomb bay doors froze shut, forcing them to abort the mission and jettison their payload over the ocean while returning to Guam.
But the poststrike reconnaissance photographs revealed the large-scale firebombing raid had been successful. More than twenty thousand buildings were destroyed, and one square mile of the snow-covered city had been wiped out, despite the fact that heavy cloud cover had obscured the target and the planes were forced to bomb by radar guesstimates rather than the more accurate Norden bombsighting system. Tens of thousands of Tokyo residents were now homeless, and an unknown number died as a result of the raid.
B-29s in formation during a daylight raid in 1945 near Mount Fuji, Japan. (US Air Force)
These results gave General Power and his officers an audacious idea. When they presented the concept to General LeMay, he was spellbound. He knew it was an unusual, incredibly risky idea, but it might change the course of the war in Asia and the Pacific. And it would involve killing multitudes of civilians.
LeMay laid down his pipe, and through weary eyes he uttered aloud the hideous calculation. “I wish there were some other way to bring Japan’s leaders to their senses.26 But an invasion of ground troops would cost at least a million Allied casualties, plus untold hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. An invasion should be ordered as a last resort, but only if we fail to create a hell on earth in Japan. That’s the only circumstance that their fanatical leaders will understand.”
He ordered his staff to put together a detailed plan within twenty-four hours. The operation would send Red Erwin and some three thousand other American airmen into an apocalypse.
Chapter Three
JOURNEY TO THE APOCALYPSE
ON MARCH 9, 1945, A MUTINY WAS ABOUT TO break out at the Twentieth Air Force’s bases on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian when the airmen learned that General LeMay wanted them to remove the guns from their 325 planes and then conduct a ferocious low-level bombing raid on the capital of Japan. The attack would be from 5,000 to 8,000 feet rather than 25,000 to 30,000 feet.
The airmen were stunned, and furious.
LeMay tried to give the crew leaders a pep talk, telling them, “You’re going to deliver the biggest firecracker1 the Japanese have ever seen.”
But his plan to radically alter their attack procedure seemed like the stupidest, most dangerous idea many of the B-29ers had ever heard.
“When that epic order came down, I, like 90 percent of the other people, was ready to mutiny,” reported Ray Clanton, who was then a second lieutenant and pilot. “It was crazy. It was absolutely insane. Because the airplanes even at 30,000 feet were being shot out of the sky. We were [already] taking initial hits and losses somewhere in the area of 50 percent and 60 percent on every mission. When this order came down, we were ready to revolt, and I do mean that. We thought LeMay was sending us to our death.”
According to Clanton, a mass “combat refusal” broke out during the mission briefing. “Some people actually just went to the back of the room, took their wings off and dropped them in a hat,” he said decades later. “You’re not going to kill me, baby,” Clanton thought.
Orville Blackburn confirmed Clanton’s account. “We balked on it and we almost did not fly because we thought ‘Iron Pants’ LeMay was crazy. He had flown fire raids in Europe and there were some big losses, and we had that in our mind.”
Generals LeMay and Power had dubbed the plan Operation Meetinghouse. It was to be a massive strike that would become the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. The target was Tokyo, the military, political, media, business, and education capital of Japan and home of the emperor and the imperial court.
Instead of a high-altitude bombing raid on carefully selected military and industrial targets, this would be a low-altitude “area bombing” raid designed to incinerate an entire district of downtown Tokyo and all the people, buildings, and small to medium feeder factories within it. Incendiary napalm was to be the weapon, and tens of thousands of civilians would surely die. But instead of staging the raid during the day, this mission would happen at night.
The plan called for 325 B-29s to be stripped of everything except their turret guns, stuffed with incendiary bombs, and approach the target area in single file at one-minute intervals rather than as a group formation. All these were significant departures from standard procedure, but LeMay and Power thought these steps could sharply increase the accuracy of the bombing attack, improve fuel efficiency, and increase the odds that the force would survive attacks by Japanese fighters and antiaircraft guns. LeMay speculated that Japanese night fighters were ineffective, and he also guessed there was a possible blind spot that worked in favor of the low-altitude approach, namely, Japanese searchlights and antiaircraft guns would not perform well against the low-flying bombers. “And we could be wrong as hell,” he worried.
Red Erwin’s plane, the City of Los Angeles, had a unique role on this mission. The strong reputation of the crew had caused General Power to select it as his aerial command post and observer plane, which would lead the armada into Tokyo, and then circle above it to witness and analyze the bombing. Power would sit a few feet away from Red, take notes, and command the attack. The plane’s three gunners would be replaced by the 314th Wing intelligence officer and two other observers.
“Our preflight briefing was contentious,” remembered Red. “They pulled the map curtain back and said, ‘We’re going to hit Tokyo tonight. We’re going to burn it down. If we can burn it down then we can burn any city in Japan. And by the way, we’re going to go in at 5,000 feet.’
I remember how everybody gasped, ‘We’re going to get shot down!’ We all sat dumbfounded.”
Another B-29er described the crew briefing:2 “All speculation ended as cover sheets were ripped off briefing boards. Mouths dropped open with what they revealed. Colonel [Carl] Storrie began by saying that General LeMay had enough airplanes, bombs, and gasoline and had decided that it was time to finish the Japanese. There would be no more bucking of severe high-altitude winds and trying to knock out individual factories. Tonight, we were going in, in-trail at 5,000 to 9,000 feet with incendiary bombs. We would spread fire over the industrial and working class parts of the city. This type of raid, if it succeeded, would disrupt industry, displace workers, and drive the seat of their government into hiding.”
Red recalled that Colonel Storrie, the group commander and a pilot himself, declared, “I’ll lead it.” Red marveled, “Colonel Storrie was the bravest man I ever knew.” The colonel was a tough, lean Texan who had already seen a great deal of action as a bomber pilot in the skies over Europe. He was widely respected and trusted by the airmen.
Storrie’s statement of courage and leadership helped stop the revolt-in-progress in its tracks. All the airmen on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian immediately committed themselves to the high-risk operation.
The raid would be a fifteen-hour, 1,500-mile trip across black, empty ocean from Guam to Tokyo and back, and the B-29s’ average airspeed would be 225 miles an hour. They would have no fighter escort, and most of their defensive armament would be removed.
Red Erwin described the experience as “hours of boredom mixed with moments of sheer terror.”
Their target area was Shitimachi, a 12-square-mile rectangular-shaped district in downtown Tokyo. It was home to as many as a million people, one of the most densely populated places on earth. Most of the houses and buildings were made of wood, paper, and bamboo, often closely packed together and highly vulnerable to fire. There were no big industrial facilities in the area, but scattered throughout the dense residential housing were thought to be many small-scale factories and mom-and-pop feeder workshops that flowed into the overall Japanese war effort. The district also was home to factory workers who commuted to jobs elsewhere in Tokyo. Killing or displacing them would cripple the nation’s industry.
The weather forecast for Tokyo predicted three conditions that would be perfect for starting a massive fire from the sky: dry air, clear skies, and high winds with gusts of over 50 to 60 miles per hour.
B-29er Robert Bigelow recalled the moment of takeoff late on the tropical afternoon of March 9, 1945: “Looking down the long line of silver airplanes,3 we checked our watches. Though the glint of the afternoon sun somewhat distorted our vision, we could see propellers turn in measured precision. Just as precisely, each plane, with its four engines giving a short burst of power, came slowly out of its revetment. Resting squat and heavy on its wheels, it would slowly turn in line and join the armada of B-29s flowing toward the takeoff end of the runway. Although the fears and concerns from the earlier mission briefing lingered with each crew member, confidence was building. The Bombardier in his nose position and the Central Fire Control Gunner in his top dome gave a running account of the progress of the gathering force. As it neared our turn to start engines and join the awesome ‘stream,’ we knew that we were part of something big and important. We were taking the war to Japan.”
As the sun set on the evening of March 9, LeMay watched the long procession of planes take off into the western sky and mused, “If I am sending these men to die, they will string me up4 for it.” Since LeMay had been briefed on the biggest secret of the war effort, the development of an atomic bomb, he had been ordered by Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, chief of the army air force, not to fly on this or any other missions, because the risk of capture was too high.
Takeoffs began at 5:35 p.m., and it took a full three hours to launch all 334 B-29s into the sky from the six runways on Guam, Tinian, and Saipan. Fifty-five aircraft aborted the mission for technical reasons, but 279 approached Tokyo.
Red Erwin squeezed into the cramped and claustrophobic fuselage of the City of Los Angeles and settled into his tiny battle station. The aircraft was not designed for creature comfort but to deliver the maximum tonnage of bombs to its target. Other crewmen crawled into the tiny workspaces that left them very little room to move around, though on homeward journeys some could stretch out in the pressurized tunnel connecting the fore and aft sections to grab a nap. The captain and copilot sat on parachute packs that doubled as seat cushions. The other crewmen, including Red, wore chest packs with clips, and in an emergency, they were supposed to grab a parachute pack, clip it on, and bail out.
“I sat in the front compartment on the right side up against the fuselage,” Red remembered. “I didn’t have a window and was wedged in by equipment and the .50-caliber gun turret. It was a lonely post. I couldn’t see anything outside. All I had to sit on was a little fabric chair for a fifteen-hour mission. Some other radio operators griped that it was the worst job on the plane—absolutely boring! It was twelve hours of boredom mixed with an hour of pure terror. I wore a flight suit on every mission, plus a skull cap, parachute, life preserver, and boots. I sat on my parachute for a cushion, but I wore my Mae West life preserver at all times. I couldn’t swim.”
When you added in the painstaking preflight preparations, checklists, and briefings, a single mission from the Marianas could last as long as twenty-four hours, all of which required intense concentration and little if any sleep.
Red’s space was packed with cables, codebooks, technical papers, and radio equipment. His head was practically flush against the upper turret, which created a constant rattle. Much of his world consisted of the wires and dials of his four-channel high-frequency SCR-522 command radio set. He wore earphones and had a microphone handy. Near his feet was a small hole in the floor that contained a chute for dropping smoke and phosphorus signal flares from the aircraft. The crew communicated with each other on throat microphones hooked into an interphone intercom system, which Red maintained fastidiously, as he did all the radio equipment.
The plane featured electric food warmers, but the standard in-flight meal was fruit, candy, and sandwiches. There were “honey pots” the crew used to relieve themselves. The pilot and copilot had floor-to-ceiling sheets of armor plating at their backs, and bullet-resistant glass was mounted around their instrument panels. The senior gunner was positioned in an observation dome that protruded from the top of the aircraft. He sat in a kind of swivel-action barber chair under the dome.
Takeoffs from Guam were especially frightening moments for the aircrews since the end of the runway dropped off to a three-hundred-foot cliff, and the planes were weighed down with thousands of gallons of flammable fuel, tons of bombs, and four notoriously temperamental, problem-plagued engines.
The split-second complexity of the B-29’s controls could quickly lead to disaster if anyone made a wrong move during a crisis.
“We were rolling down the runway for takeoff on one mission and the number-four engine began to run away,” Red recalled. “Captain Simeral yelled to the copilot, Roy Stables, to feather it [shut it down]. But Roy accidentally feathered the wrong engine. So there we are, going down the runway headed toward the cliff with two engines out on the same side of the plane. We were too far down the runway to abort, so Captain Simeral yelled for the tail gunner and crew to prepare to bail out as he lifted the plane off the ground.”
To Red, it felt like the aircraft was about to rip itself apart. Captain Simeral struggled to keep the two dead engines elevated as he swung the plane around to reverse course for an emergency landing just as they ran out of runway.
“It was the longest ride of my life!” Red said. “Captain Simeral brought the plane around and made a magnificent landing with two dead engines. After he had taxied to a stop and shut down the engines, the only words he said about the episode were to the young copilot Stables: ‘Roy, what are you trying to do? Get
us killed?’”
On the night of March 9, however, the takeoff was smooth, and the crewmen of the City of Los Angeles settled into their routines. Captain Simeral engaged the autopilot, setting the plane to fly at a fixed speed and course, which he and the copilot would adjust every half hour. As usual, Red monitored the radio and stayed alert for any incoming messages from the base about changes to the mission, but to avoid interception by enemy listening posts, he sent no radio messages during the approach to Japan. When the time was right, Red would transmit a strike report to the base at Guam, detailing the mission highlights, including any visible damage to the target and any enemy response.
The long flight to Japan over the vast, empty Pacific held moments of beauty as well as terror. The round trips almost always featured a sunrise and a sunset. B-29 crews could tune into Japanese radio that played lush orchestral music and romantic ballads from America, and the combination of music and scenery could create a surreal, hallucinatory experience.
One pilot remembered, “We appeared to be floating above a pure white carpet5 stretching as far as the eye could see, ultimately blending away into a grayish haze.” He added, “The reflection of the bright sun created the illusion of being studded with 10 million diamonds. I could not escape the feeling of being in a fairy tale world of castles and fantasy.”
Another pilot recalled, “The variations in light and color in the Pacific were fantastically beautiful. They softened our own strain and our anxieties.”
Historian Barrett Tillman summarized the airmen’s experience: “Amid the hours of tedious routine,6 and the languorous time spent listening to the pulsing drone of four powerful engines, there were moments of sublime compensation. The glory of a Pacific sunrise, when sea and sky turned from gray-black to vivid golden hues, or the vertical grandeur of a backlit thunderhead cresting 30,000 feet was worth the entire fifteen-hour trip.”
