A Torch To The Enemy; The Fire Raid on Tokyo

160 pages. With 16 pages of photographs. Appendix. Some page discoloration noted. Cover has some wear and soiling. Martin Caidin (September 14, 1927 March 24, 1997) was an American author, screenwriter, and an authority on aeronautics and aviation. Caidin began writing fiction in 1957. In his career he authored more than 50 fiction and nonfiction books as well as more than 1,000 magazine articles. His best-known novel is Cyborg, which was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man franchise. He also wrote numerous works of military history, especially concerning aviation. Caidin was also an airplane pilot. He bought and restored a 1936 Junkers Ju 52 airplane. Caidin was credited in episodes of the original Bionic Woman series, a Six Million Dollar Man spinoff, but not in the 2007 remake of The Bionic Woman. The stunning true story of one of the most impressive and boldest military bombing missions of WW II. Employing a never-before-tried method of attack, 334 American long-range B-29 Superfortresses flew against Tokyo--in loose formation, with no gunners, carrying a full incendiary load--in one of the biggest gambles of the war. The strikes conducted by the USAAF on the night of 910 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, constitute the single most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history. Sixteen square miles (10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless. On the night of 910 March 1945, 334 B-29s targeted the Shitamachi neighborhood of Tokyo in a low-altitude bombing raid. Ultimately, 279 bombers dropped 1,665 tons of bombs on the city. The ordnance consisted mostly of 500-pound E-46 cluster bombs, which released 38 napalm-carrying M69 incendiary bomblets at an altitude of 2,0002,500 ft. The M69s punched through thin roofing material or landed on the ground; in either case they ignited 35 seconds later and regurgitated a jet of flaming napalm. A smaller number of M47 incendiary bombs were also dropped; the M47 was a 100-pound jelled-gasoline and white phosphorus bomb, designed to ignite upon impact. Within the first two hours of the raid, rapidly spreading fires had overwhelmed the Japanese authorities' firefighting capabilities. The first B-29s to arrive dropped bombs in a large X pattern centered in Tokyo's densely populated district near the docks in both Koto and Ch city wards on the water; follow-on aircraft aimed near this flaming X. Individual fires caused by the bombs swiftly coalesced into a general conflagration, which would have been classified as a firestorm if not for prevailing natural winds gusting at 17 to 28 mph. Approximately 15.8 square miles of the city were destroyed. A total of 282 out of 339 B-29s reached Tokyo, 27 of which were lost due to being shot down by Japanese air defenses, mechanical failure, or being caught in massive updrafts caused by the fires below. The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II, causing more destruction than the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and even Hiroshima and Nagasaki as single events.…