Chapter 339: Disappointed Americans
Moreover, the number of bombers dispatched by the two armies in this joint air raid is too large for Japan's air defense system. The Japanese army, which was responsible for the air defense of the homeland, was www.biquge.info unable to cope with it. Even the Japanese radar, which did not need to throw jamming foil and was still using an oscilloscope with backward performance, was jammed with dense targets.
The pilots of the Japanese night fighter unit who took off to intercept them were also stunned by the queue that appeared in front of them and the huge fleet of planes that was more than 100 kilometers long. In the past, the Anti-Japanese Union and the US military bombed only three or four hundred bombers at a time, which can be regarded as a big number.
After encountering the bomber group of Japanese fighter pilots who were responsible for Osaka's air defense, they were also a little overwhelmed by the overwhelming and almost endless bomber group in front of them. It was the first time they had seen such a large fleet of planes, and they had directly killed a city.
The U.S. B-29 bomber group, which took the lead, was intercepted by Japanese ground antiaircraft artillery fire and fighter planes, and dropped all the more than 2,000 tons of high-explosive aerial bombs it carried into the urban area of Osaka. Before the Japanese troops, who were tasked with Osaka's air defense mission, could take a breath, the dust raised by more than 2,000 tons of high-explosive bombs fell to the ground.
The second echelon of the Anti-Japanese Union and the US military, with a total of more than 700 B24 bombers, formed a huge group of more than 1,400 tons of napalm and threw all the napalm bombs into the urban area of Osaka, which had been blown into ruins by 2,000 tons of high-explosive aerial bombs, adding fuel to the fire.
This tactic was jointly developed by the Anti-Japanese Union and the US military, using high-explosive bombs to knock down all the reinforced concrete buildings in the city, and at the same time driving as many residents as possible into the air-raid shelters. Create conditions for the napalm dropped by the subsequent B24 bomber group to exert maximum lethality.
The B-29 bomber took off from North Manchu and arrived on the Japanese mainland and could carry up to seven tons of bombs. In the case of guaranteed firepower for self-defense, five tons of bombs are generally carried. More than 400 B-29 bombers are enough to carry more than 2,000 tons of bombs. More than 2,000 tons of high-explosive aerial bombs are enough to complete the demolition of all reinforced concrete buildings in Osaka City.
In addition to the more than 700 B24 bombers that followed, they carried more than 1,400 tons of napalm that could set a fire in the city of Osaka. Nearly 4,000 tons of various bombs sent the entire city of Osaka into the Abi Hell.
By the time all the bombers had dropped their bombs and returned home, the entire city of Osaka had been completely razed to the ground, and the flames burning on the ground could be clearly seen from dozens of kilometers away. Osaka, a once bustling commercial city, has been transformed into a purgatory on earth in the blink of an eye.
During the air raid operation, despite the desperate fire of the Japanese ground air defense artillery, the air defense fighter group also desperately intercepted. However, the huge aircraft group composed of the bomber group of the Anti-Japanese Union and the US military made the anti-aircraft firepower of the Japanese simply overwhelmed. Two groups of bombers, totaling more than 1,000 planes, dropped a total of 4,000 tons of high-explosive bombs and napalm over Osaka, completely flattening the entire city of Osaka.
After the forced evacuation of the Japanese army before the bombing, the city of Osaka, which had a population of 1.1 million before the war, had a population of several hundred thousand, and only a few thousand remained after the bombing. There was not a single intact house in the entire city of Osaka, and the fire that burned and engulfed everything was slowly extinguished after a few days. After the bombing, Osaka was left with only one place name on the map of Japan.
Osaka was chosen for this bombing campaign only because it was home to the largest army arsenal on the Japanese mainland. Although the arsenal has been evacuated as much as possible, the parts that remain in the city of Osaka, as well as several aircraft assembly plants in the city of Osaka, have become the main targets.
Of course, the little leftovers left in the city of Osaka are not enough to dispatch so many bombers at once. However, in order to find out the actual situation of the Anti-Japanese Union, and at the same time to increase the deterrence of the Japanese base camp, Major General Li Mei took this unfortunate city as the first target.
In fact, the first choice for this bombing was not Osaka, but Nagoya, further north. It's just that before the bombing, Nagoya's clouds were thick, which seriously affected the bombing accuracy, so he escaped by luck, and Osaka finally became unlucky. The entire city of Osaka, including the old buildings in Osaka Castle, is left with charcoal and corpses in addition to the broken bricks and tiles.
Originally, according to the meaning of the Anti-Union, there was no need to send so many bombers to bomb a city. But the Major General Li Mei took it all and said that the United States would bear all the resources of the bombing. These include napalm and high-explosive aerial bombs, as well as resources such as jet fuel.
At the same time, he said that in this bombing, the Anti-United Nations lost many bombers, and he added how many bombers to the Anti-United Nations. Under the unprecedentedly generous situation of this Major General Li Mei, although Yang Zhen was very reluctant, he finally complied with his wishes. The generosity of this Major General Li Mei really made him a little embarrassed not to take it.
Since they Americans are not wasteful, then Yang Zhen himself has nothing to think is inappropriate. Anyway, they think that the Mitsubishi aircraft factory in Osaka City, plus a half-crippled Osaka artillery factory, is worth paying such a big price, and it doesn't matter if the Anti-Union Rebellion is there.
As a result, under the indiscriminate bombardment of more than 4,000 tons of bombs and napalm, the unfortunate city of Osaka, along with a large number of factories inside, was reduced to ashes in the bombing. After the bombing, Osaka, a once prosperous industrial and commercial city, fell into a deathly silence.
In Kobe, southwest of Osaka, more than 600 tons of napalm dropped by more than 300 bombers of the Anti-Japanese Union also completely wiped out the southeastern urban area, which had suffered only a few air raids since the Japanese mainland had suffered air raids and had not suffered much damage as a whole.
In this joint air raid, the United Nations lost 16 bombers and 21 fighters. The U.S. military lost 21 bombers and 31 fighters failed to return home. In addition to the loss of the aircrew on the plane, the most disappointed person in the entire operation was probably the Major General Li Mei.
This is because in the course of this bombing, the bomber group of the Anti-United Nations was no different from that of the US military, except for adopting low-altitude penetration and suppressing the anti-aircraft fire position with medium-sized bombers. This Major General Li Mei, as well as his staff officers, found nothing.
Although the Americans, who did not give up, organized several joint air raids, they still did not find anything. On the contrary, a large amount of aviation fuel was wasted, plus a large number of valuable aerial bombs. In the end, the commander of the US Army Air Force had to personally send a telegram to Major General Li Mei, asking him to immediately stop this senseless and serious wasteful behavior.
Disappointed, the Americans had no choice but to return to their old ways. According to the division of labor between the two armies, each bombed its own target. However, the bombing targets of the Anti-Japanese Union were instead concentrated on the island of Honshu and southern Korea, to be precise, on the coast of the Seto Inland Sea, and Kyushu and Shikoku were handed over to the Americans.
However, in the final operation, all the heavy bombers dispatched by the Anti-Japanese Union, all the B-29 bomber groups dispatched by the US military stationed in North Manchuria, and the bomber groups of the 21st Air Force that took off from Saipan were also involved. 2,400 heavy bombers were dispatched in four echelons to carry out an unprecedented bombing campaign against Tokyo, Kawasaki, and Yokohama.
During the entire operation, codenamed Hurricane, more than 2,000 strategic bombers dispatched by the Chinese and US militaries dropped a total of more than 3,000 tons of napalm and high-explosive aerial bombs on Tokyo. In Kawasaki and Yokohama, nearly 2,000 tons of high-explosive bombs and napalm were dropped at the same time.
After the bombing, the original area of more than 100 square kilometers of Tokyo was completely destroyed by the anti-Japanese coalition after several rounds of bombing, and most of the urban area composed of traditional Japanese houses has disappeared. In the end, only 22 square kilometers of urban areas, mainly made of reinforced concrete buildings, were completely erased from the map.
Kawasaki from the shipyard to the aircraft factory in the city, and all the docks in Yokohama to the city are also missing. Together with the previous bombing of Hanshin, the entire industrial area around the Seto Inland Sea in mainland Japan was completely paralyzed. Japan's domestic industrial production capacity fell to 30 percent of its pre-war level.
The bombing depleted all of North Manchuria's stockpiles of high-explosive aerial bombs, as well as napalm. Before the follow-up bombs of the Americans, as well as the replenishment of the production capacity of the Anti-United Nations. In the past month, apart from the apex clearance of Japan's major radar bases, no large-scale bombing has been carried out on the Japanese mainland.
At the cost of the razing of Tokyo and the loss of Kawasaki tiles, the Japanese finally got a month's respite. But this month's respite is too costly for the Japanese. The only remaining urban areas of Tokyo, including the Imperial Palace, are not even a single piece of rubble. The reinforced concrete building, which had survived napalm, was blown into ruins.
The entire metropolis of several million people, apart from the police and firefighters, has almost no trace of human activity. The corpses piled up in the city were stinking and took nearly a month to clean up. As for how many bodies were buried in the bombed bomb shelter, it is known that it has not been ascertained for decades after the war.
Of the hundreds of thousands of people who had been largely reduced to ashes in the city, which had remained largely in the city, only a few thousand remained after the bombing. The once bustling capital of Japan no longer exists, and all that remains is hundreds of square kilometers of ruins and rubble.
North Manchuria's distance from the Japanese mainland was so close that when the B-29 bomber carried seven tons of bombs, it had enough range to cover the entire Japanese mainland except Okinawa. The b24 bomber could also carry two and a half tons of aerial bombs while ensuring sufficient endurance.
The Stirling and B-17, two bombers with a slightly smaller bomb load, could also carry more than two tons of bombs when bombing Honshu Island, where Japan's major cities are most concentrated. Even Pei Ba and Ye Er, two old Soviet bombers, could carry nearly two tons of bombs.
After the US military captured Saipan, the Soviet Union was next door, and even in the face of constant protests, the number of B-29 bombers stationed in North Manchuria continued to increase. It is because compared with the islands in the Pacific Ocean, North Manchurian has unique conditions for air raids against Japan.
Of course, in addition to the transportation of bombs and fuel, which was often obstructed by the Soviets, intentionally or unintentionally, and some worries about leaking the latest American bomber technology. This base, in terms of maintenance and logistical support capabilities, is far from being comparable to Saipan and Tinian in the Pacific.
The Soviets' frequent sideways and covert elbowing were also the reasons why the Americans decided to provide high-quality aviation fuel processing technology to the Anti-Japanese Union after the B-29 bomber group was stationed, increased the supply of steel smelting equipment and chemical industry equipment, and transferred some production technology and technology.