Word: b-29s
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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...with cut-down bomb-loads and carefully calculated fuel allowances to make the run and get home. But as airmen worked into intimate acquaintanceship with their massive, wondrously complicated weapon, the assaults were stepped up both in timing and in loads dropped. This week, when the B-29s had struck the great industrial center at Nagoya a second time, the force on Saipan could count five assaults on the Jap mainland...
...protect Tokyo from the Superfort raids they expected and feared, the Japs kept sending down medium bombers to pock Saipan's runways and try to keep the B-29s grounded. Last week, in one such thrust, the enemy destroyed one $600,000 Superfortress, damaged two others. But the new Strategic Air Force of the Pacific Ocean Areas, neatly dovetailed with the Navy's surface command, was planning counter-measures to end this nuisance and to rock the Japs back...
Lieut. General Millard F. Harmon, commander of the new Air Force (of Army and Navy bombers), passed up the temptation to make a Pearl Harbor anniversary attack on Tokyo with his B-29s.* But the heart of the enemy's homeland was devastated that day far more effectively than the available Superforts could have done it. An earthquake shook Japan at 1149 and 1153 p.m., Tokyo time...
Seismographs around the world recorded the shocks as possibly far more severe than those of 1923, when the U.S. sent quick aid to devastated Yokohama and Tokyo. Perhaps because single B-29s from Saipan kept droning over, photographing the results of the latest disaster, Jap broadcasters belatedly conceded that "the quake was severe," although they asserted that "the inhabitants of central Japan enjoyed sitting on Mother Earth's cradle...
...Navy), each carrying two tons of bombs. Covering them were 30 Lightning fighters. And below them, adding bombardment to bombing, were cruisers and destroyers under Rear Admiral Allan E. Smith. It was the heaviest air strike in the history of the Pacific war, and marked the first time that B-29s had teamed with other forces. The bombing was through overcast, but with some 1,300 tons of steel and explosive rained upon its installations, concentrated into eight square miles, Sulphur Island earned its name...