Word: kobe
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Major General Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the Marianas Superforts, gave more details: "Yokohama is gone, Nagoya is no longer a worthwhile target. Kobe is gone. Soon we'll be striking smaller cities in the 100,000-population class." Osaka had had it, and only ten square miles of Tokyo's 60-sq. mi. industrial area was left intact-one year after the first B-29 raid on Japan. Unlike Germany, Japan lacks the time, technicians and industrial savvy to rebuild ruined factories quickly. Said General LeMay: "It is just a matter of time before we get everything...
Sister city Kobe, 20 miles northwest, was still smouldering from an earlier attack. Flyers had driven through snow, fog, thunderheads, antiaircraft fire and fairly strong fighter opposition-but they had left Kobe "one hell of a hot place...
...first smash at Yokohama-in which 450 planes dropped 3,200 tons of incendiaries. The 21st Bomber Command said 6.9 sq.mi. of the great seaport city was burned out; the Japs said 60,000 homes were destroyed. Next on the B-29s' list was industrial Kobe, which caught another 3,000-ton load of U.S. fire bombs...
Next day, LeMay relaxed somewhat. sending a smaller force (100 to 150 B-29s) to bomb the Kawanishi aircraft plant near Kobe, biggest producer of Jap seaplanes...
Intelligence officers estimated that 40% of Japan's plane production was gone, that 50% of metropolitan Tokyo, 20% of Kobe and Osaka, more than 10% of Nagoya had been burned out. 6-293 have destroyed 395 Jap planes in the air, racked up another 301 probables, smashed 106 on the ground...