Word: yawata
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Poorhouse. It was not the whole score. Against such successes, other continuing dilemmas stood out. Japanese industry had recovered to 40% of the 19307 34 level. For example, the great Yawata steel plant (a favorite wartime target of U.S. bombers from China) was producing again-62,000 tons of ingots and rolled steel in April; but this was only one-seventh of 1941's peak production rate...
June: First B-29s to raid Japan bombed Yawata from China bases...
...Beginning. The first B-29 mission against Japan was flown June 15, 1944, when 68 planes from Chengtu, deep in China, bombed the Yawata Steel Works on Kyushu. The communiqué said hopefully that results were "effective." Four planes were lost on this pioneering mission. A total of 49 missions was flown from China, India and Burma bases, but B-29 men knew from the start that the invasion of the Marianas (begun at Saipan, also June 15) was far more important for their purposes. For in China every bomb, every gallon of gasoline had to be flown over...
...target was an old favorite, Yawata on Kyushu. Over Yawata's steel plants, the B-29s wheeled into the heaviest ack-ack barrage the enemy had ever thrown...
...hundred fighters had taken the air; twelve were confirmed destroyed, twelve were probables. The Jap home air force's most resolute opposition had failed to prevent a single U.S. element reaching its target. By the time the last bomber left, the afternoon sun had been blotted from Yawata's mills. Smoke was so dense that bomb bursts from the last planes could not be seen...