On this day in military history…
The first daylight bombing of Tokyo by United States strategic bombers took place on November 24th 1944. It was the debut of the new long-range B-29 Superfortress in direct attack against the Japanese home islands from newly captured bases in the Marianas. The architect of the operation was Major General Curtis E. LeMay, recently brought in as commander of XXI Bomber Command. The US had already tried B-29 strikes on Japan from China earlier in 1944, under Operation Matterhorn, but those had been enormously difficult logistically and had achieved little. Now, with the Marianas airfields at Saipan and Guam active, LeMay was able to launch much heavier, repeated strategic raids directly across the Pacific.
The primary target of the first Tokyo mission was the Musashino aircraft engine works, owned by Nakajima, one of Japan’s major aircraft manufacturers. The objective at this point in the air campaign was industrial strangulation: targeting the ability of Japan to produce aircraft engines and airframes. The factory was selected because it was among the most important high value nodes in the network of Japanese aircraft production.
On the morning of the 24th, 111 B-29s took off. The mission was conducted at high altitude and employed conventional high explosive bombs, mainly 500 lb HE types. Early B-29 doctrine still focused on precision bombing from altitude, much like the US 8th Air Force in Europe. The famous low altitude fire raids with incendiaries in 1945 were still months in the future.
Japanese fighter opposition was present, as well as anti-aircraft fire, but the losses were surprisingly low given the target and the era. At the time, American officers were relieved at how few B-29s were shot down. Only seven B-29s were lost to all causes, including mechanical failures, fuel problems, and combat combined. That low loss rate shocked some in Tokyo’s military high command who had assumed Japan would blunt the B-29s with ease.
The results of the raid on the engine works were actually quite limited. Japanese camouflage and dispersion of machinery, as well as cloud cover that interfered with visual bomb aiming, meant that only a small part of the facility was damaged. A classic problem plagued high altitude daylight precision bombing of cities for all sides in the war: it was extremely hard to actually hit specific industrial buildings from 25,000 to 30,000 feet. The industrial results of 24 November could not be called a decisive blow. But symbolically and strategically the raid had enormous meaning. The Americans had just demonstrated they could attack Tokyo regularly, in heavy force, with a plane that could reach Japan from the mid-Pacific and return. The war had irreversibly changed direction.
There is another interesting detail. The name Tokyo was not actually used in the initial target designation. The mission orders were written more clinically around the Musashino factory and other industrial objectives in the Kanto region. But for American newspapers, for the public, and for US military morale, the phrase bombing Tokyo was irresistible. Within hours, newspapers in America printed it. The mental effect was immediate: Japan itself was not untouchable any longer.
LeMay himself later admitted that this first mission was disappointing in terms of bomb accuracy. But he learned. He transformed B-29 operations over the next three months, eventually changing tactics dramatically, shifting to night, low altitude incendiary bombing which would devastate Japanese urban industrial capacity in 1945.
So the raid of 24 November 1944 did not cripple Tokyo. It did not destroy the Nakajima Musashino works. But it marked the true beginning of the final strategic strangulation of Japan. It was the first blow of a campaign that left Japan’s industrial cities ruined, and gave notice that American airpower had reached the Japanese home islands and would not be turned away again.
