Paul Tibbetts stands in front of Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay. In all, hundreds of B-29s were stationed at the four bases, which were just 1,500 miles south of Japan, meaning a B-29 could take off from one of the bases, conduct its bombing mission and then return home with some fuel in reserve. quickly built four forward air bases, on Tinian, Saipan, and two airfields on Guam. And after the United States captured the Mariana Islands from Japanese forces, the U.S. The fruit of a $3 billion development project, the B-29 had range of 3,250 miles. The B-29, which had been used from distant bases in China, was a quantum leap in bomber capabilities. Out of 80 airmen aboard the 16 planes, 69 survived, and even then only by their ingenuity and determination.īy August of 1945 the game had changed, as a new bomber was ready to fly. Of the 16 B-25s that launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, 15 were lost, and the surviving plane was captured by Soviet forces. The strike, informally known as the Doolittle Raid (after Jimmy Doolittle, the mission commander), was more propaganda than strategy, and the attack was close to a suicide mission. The B-25 had been used in an attack against Tokyo in 1942. The first was getting a bomber with a much greater reach than the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress or the B-25 Mitchell Bomber, neither of which had enough range to get to Japan, conduct a bombing mission and then return safely to a U.S.-forward airfield.
The two nuclear attacks remain the only two uses of nuclear munitions in time of war.Īs the United States took the advantage against Japan in the Pacific theater, American planners knew that the key to bringing the war to Japan while avoiding getting caught up in a long and bloody land, sea and air war was twofold. Estimates on the number of Japanese people killed in the two raids vary from just over 125,000 to 225,000. If you know anything about the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, it’s likely the fact that two of these planes, the first called Enola Gay, the second, Bockscar, were used to drop one atomic bomb each on two Japanese cities in 1945, Hiroshima on August 6, and three days later, Nagasaki on August 9.
LeMay headed the United States Strategic Air Command for three decades and was the principal architect of the bombing campaigns in Japan, Korea and Vietnam, including the firebombing attack of Tokyo in 1945, which really is the subject of the podcasts. It’s also the subject, in a roundabout way, of four episodes of best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast, in which he profiles General Curtis LeMay, again, in a roundabout way. But if you were to use a different yardstick-its impact-or yet another one-its technological advancement over the hardware it replaced-it’s arguably the most important plane to ever go to war. If you measured the importance of a warplane’s legacy based on its longevity, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress doesn’t even make the top 10.
The 19th Bomb Group crew photographed with a B-29 Superfortress in 1951 on Kadena AFB in Okinawa, Japan.