Cub Driver wrote in message ...
On 30 Apr 2004 05:00:14 GMT, nt (Krztalizer) wrote:

Realize also that those B-29s were dropping a far larger percentage of
relatively light fire bombs, in comparison to the 8th's general preference for
GP and HE.

I'm not sure that the 20th AF was dropping incendiaries all that much,
before the March fire raid. It was a whole radical change in tactics,
not merely a change in altitude.

Table 126 USAAF statistical digest, tons of bombs dropped by the
20th Air Force, columns are date / total bomb tonnage / HE tonnage
/ incendiary tonnage

Jun-44 / 547 / 501 / 46
Jul-44 / 209 /209 / 0
Aug-44 / 252 / 184 / 68
Sep-44 / 521 / 521 / 0
Oct-44 / 1,669 / 1,023 / 646
Nov-44 / 2,205 / 1,758 / 447
Dec-44 / 3,661 / 3,051 / 610
Jan-45 / 3,410 / 2,511 / 899
Feb-45 / 4,020 / 2,401 / 1,619
Mar-45 / 15,283 / 4,105 / 11,178
Apr-45 / 17,492 / 13,209 / 4,283
May-45 / 24,285 / 6,937 / 17,348
Jun-45 / 32,542 / 9,954 / 22,588
Jul-45 / 43,091 / 9,766 / 33,325
Aug-45 / 21,873 / 8,641 / 13,232

1944 / 9,064 / 7,247 / 1,817
1945 / 161,996 / 57,524 / 104,472
Total / 171,060 / 64,771 / 106,289

The problem over Japan as I understand it was the jet stream--indeed,
that this was the *discovery* of the jet stream. Flying with the jet
stream, the planes were too fast for the Norden to be effective.
Flying against it, they were too vulnerable to flak. (Winter of
1944-45.) And I suppose that flying at right angles to it meant they
couldn't hit anything, though I never read that.

My understanding is basically the same except that it would be
the discovery of the jet stream over Japan, not the jet stream
per se.

Geoffrey Sinclair
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