JAPAN 1944–1945 The Strategic Bombing Campaign by General Curtis LeMay's B-29s

A strategic bombing campaign ravaged Japan as it continued to fight tenaciously despite the inexorable American advance. In 1944, the US Army Air Force deployed an ultramodern bomber on the Pacific theater — the most costly weapons system of the war: the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. General Curtis LeMay initiated radical and devastating tactics that ruined Japanese cities and industries.

The raids launched initially from China, then from the Marianas, the enormous distances to be covered to strike the Empire of the Rising Sun diminished as the American advance progressed, with islands won at great cost in blood becoming vast air bases. From April 1945, hundreds of four-engine bombers struck under the protection of the formidable P-51 Mustang escort fighters, which made the task even harder for Japanese fighter pilots. The latter nonetheless fought to the last with desperate energy, sometimes even at the cost of ultimate sacrifice by deliberately ramming the B-29s.

Through the forces involved, the tactics employed, a chronology, figures and assessments, illustrated with numerous maps and photographs, this book recounts the titanic confrontation that would culminate in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

French-language edition of an Osprey book.