A raid on Yawata marked the beginning of the American strategic bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands. The raid was not particularly successful, but it demonstrated the feasibility of using B-29’s against Japanese targets.
The Doolittle raid against Tokyo on April 18, 1942, was the first air raid by United States bombers on the Japanese home islands and the only one for the next two years. The rapid Japanese advance in the Pacific and the Japanese hold on the Asian mainland drove U.S. forces from any bases close enough to carry out air raids on Japan. The available heavy bombers, the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-24 Liberator, did not have adequate range. The B-29 Superfortress, however, brought to bear new technology that made possible a devastating strategic bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands.
The Army had shown interest in the new long-range, high-altitude bomber that the Boeing Company had begun to develop in 1938. Although the prototype, the XB-29, was not test-flown until September 21, 1942, the U.S. Army Air Corps
Plans by the Army Air Forces (AAF) for the plane’s use had taken various forms, including its commitment in Europe. By the time significant numbers of the planes could be ready, however, British and U.S. bombers flying from England had made the B-29 less than essential for the war against Germany. By the end of 1943, Army Air Forces chief General H. H. Arnold was committed to its use against Japan. United States air bases in the Aleutian Islands, however, were too far from Japan. The islands in the Mariana group that could provide bases (Saipan, Tinian, and Guam) were not projected to be in U.S. hands until the winter of 1944. Thus, Army Air Forces planners, wanting to get the new Superfortresses into operation as soon as possible, looked to China.
On Arnold’s orders, Brigadier General Kenneth B. Wolfe drew up a plan. Submitted to the Army Air Forces chief on October 11, 1943, Wolfe’s plan called for basing the new B-29’s in India and staging them through fields in China. Approved by Arnold, the plan then went to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Desiring to do something for China and fearing that China’s leader, Chiang Kai-shek, might quit the war if he did not receive some tangible help against the Japanese, Roosevelt proved a receptive audience and approved the plan, known as Operation Matterhorn, in November, 1943.
The idea of an independent, powerful, strategic bombing force had long been a dream of U.S. flyers. Supplying itself with all the necessities of war, this command could, it was believed, bludgeon any enemy into surrender by strategic bombing without the necessity of invasion. Perhaps the Superfortress was the weapon.
Having committed itself to a strategic bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands, in April, 1944, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff established a special organization, the Twentieth Air Force, to direct all B-29 operations. General Arnold, acting as executive agent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was selected to command this new force and given control over the employment of the Superfortresses. Neither the British commander in the area, Lord Louis Mountbatten
A group of B-29 Superfortresses drops its bombs over Yokohama, Japan.
Implementation of Operation Matterhorn was entrusted to Wolfe’s Twentieth Bomber Command, which originally was made up of the Fifty-eighth and the Seventy-third Bombardment Wings. The Seventy-third was detached in April, 1944, to go to the Mariana Islands, whose date of capture had been advanced to June, 1944. A wing contained 112 bombers plus replacement ships, and slightly more than three thousand officers and eight thousand enlisted men. Support, service, and engineer personnel brought the total strength of the Twentieth Bomber Command to approximately twenty thousand troops.
Because all supplies for Chinese bases had to be flown in, stockpiling was difficult. B-29’s from India had to fly seven round trips to bring enough gasoline and other necessities to make possible one mission over Japan. With the loss of the Seventy-third Wing, the Fifty-eighth Wing could not supply itself for raids of one hundred planes or more, the hoped-for number, more than a few times each month. This, combined with the high rate of engine failure, the loss of planes because of inexperienced crews, and the other faults to be expected in a new weapon meant that the first raid on Japan could not be launched until June 15, 1944.
The Army Air Forces’ Committee of Operations Analysts had suggested that an appropriate strategic target for B-29’s would be the coke ovens that supplied Japan’s steel mills. Consequently, the first strike was directed against the coke ovens of the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata. Located on the island of Kyūshū, at the edge of the bomber’s combat range, the Yawata plant produced 24 percent of Japan’s rolled steel and was considered the most important target in the Japanese steel industry.
Beginning on June 13, ninety-two planes left the Bengal fields in India, seventy-nine of which reached the Chengtu bases. Each came loaded with two tons of five-hundred-pound bombs and needed only to refuel in China. Commanders in Washington, D.C., who had picked the target, ordered a night mission with bombs to be dropped from between eight thousand and eighteen thousand feet. On June 15, the same day that Marines went ashore on Saipan, sixty-eight planes, led by wing commander Brigadier General LaVerne “Blondie” Saunders, left the fields. Four were forced back by engine trouble, and one crashed immediately after take-off. Forty-seven Superfortresses bombed Yawata that night, thirty-two using radar because of an effective blackout of the city compounded by haze and smoke. The other planes did not make it over Yawata for a variety of reasons, most of them mechanical. Six planes were lost, one to enemy fighters on the return trip. Fighter opposition over the target and antiaircraft fire had been light.
Photo reconnaissance of Yawata showed little damage, the only significant hit being on a power station thirty-seven hundred feet from the coke ovens. This was not a massive fire-bomb raid of the type that would begin in March, 1945, from the Mariana islands. The AAF was still concentrating on high-altitude, precision bombing. The Fifty-eighth Wing averaged two raids a month until March, 1945, when it was moved to Saipan. Operating under a very difficult logistical situation, Operation Matterhorn had been a stimulant for Chinese morale and had provided a necessary shakedown for the new bombers and crews. Matterhorn was not a success, nor was the first raid on Japan, but both presaged a more destructive future for the Superfortress.
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Craven, Wesley F., and James L. Cate. The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945. Vol. 5 in The Army Air Forces in World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953. This volume in the U.S. Army Air Forces’ official history provides a wealth of information about the people, machines, and events that were part of Operation Matterhorn. -
Larrabee, Eric. “LeMay.” In Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. A concise account of the role of General Curtis LeMay, the man who assumed leadership of the Twentieth Bomber Command in August, 1944, in the strategic bombing offensive against Japan. Discusses both the Yawata raid and subsequent assaults from China. -
Morrison, Wilbur H. Point of No Return: The Story of the Twentieth Air Force. New York: Times Books, 1979. Chapters 1 through 13 of this narrative history cover in detail the development of the B-29, the debates about its employment, and Operation Matterhorn. -
Pimlott, John. B-29 Superfortress. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993. Provides detailed information about the Superfortress itself. Excellent drawings and illustrations. -
United States. Strategic Bombing Survey. The Strategic Air Operations of Very Heavy Bombardment in the War Against Japan (Twentieth Air Force). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946. The reports that make up this survey contain extensive statistical material about the impact of strategic bombing on Japan. -
Werrell, Kenneth P. Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan During World War II. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. This detailed look at U.S. Japanese bombing campaigns includes a chapter on the Superfortress, which it calls the “best bomber of the war.”
World War II: Pacific Theater
Bombing of Pearl Harbor
Doolittle Mission Bombs Tokyo
Battle of the Coral Sea
Central Pacific Offensive
Japan Orders Kamikaze Attacks
Okinawa Campaign Meets Stiff Japanese Resistance
Atomic Bombs Destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki