<text id=00he1107><title>LeMay Takes Over on Saipan</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>LeMay Takes Over on Saipan</hdr><body>
<p>LeMay began as usual, by observing. He rode some of the missions to Japan. Most of the raids he dispatched were standard, high-altitude precision daylight or radar bombing strikes against point targets. In between, he tried some fire raids, using incendiary bombs instead of high explosives. Two were flown, and the results were carefully analyzed by Arnold's staff.
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<p>On 19 February 1945, a new target directive gave LeMay redefined priorities. Aircraft engine factories were first, as before; in second place were two items of equal priority. Incendiary attacks on cities shared the spot with the bombing of aircraft assembly plants.
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<p>The most successful test of the fire raids occurred on 25 February. The 73rd, 313th and 314th Bomb Wings struck Tokyo with a combined force of 172 B-29s bombing the primary. They left 28,000 buildings in ashes, and a smoldering square mile of inner city.
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<p>The Superforts went back to Musashino for the eighth time on 4 March. The weather again defeated the attack. That mission marked the tacitly accepted end of any attempts to continue with precision bombing by visual means from high altitudes during the daylight hours. The eight trips to Musashino had put 835 aircraft over the target, but had destroyed less than four per cent of the roofed area of the factory. It was a miserable performance, and it was high time to find out what was so wrong.
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<p>In the final analysis, it was the weather. Between the high-altitude winds of the jet stream, which threw out all the existing techniques of bombing, and the frequent thick cloud cover over the targets, there was little hope of accurate bombing. To hit the pickle barrel, somebody had pointed out, you first must be able to see the pickle barrel. There were other factors: the engines did not perform as expected at altitude, the bomb load was smaller than it should have been, fighter interception was determined and often strong, and anti-aircraft reached easily to the bombing altitudes.
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<p>LeMay kept coming back to the same concept: bomb with incendiaries, from low levels, at night. The winds were lighter, and clouds were thinner or above the bombers' path. Engines would operate cooler, last longer and burn less fuel. By flying in a stream and not a formation, more fuel could be saved. Japanese night fighters were few and poorly handled, so the defensive systems of the B-29 could be cut back to the single tail gunner, and all the ammunition weight and turret poundage could be saved. Trade all that weight for bombs. Trade the fuel saved for more bombs. LeMay made the decision. The missions would be flown at altitudes between 5,000 and 8,000 ft (1,525 and 2,440 m) by stripped B-29s carrying almost all of their bomb load as incendiaries. They would drop on fires set by pathfinder B-29s. And, if things worked out right, they would set Japan ablaze from end to end.
