Description
Black Snow - Curtis LeMay, and the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb
by James Scott
Hardcover
432 Pages
September 2022
“Black Snow brilliantly vivifies the horrific reality of the most destructive air attack in history, against Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945. James Scott deftly employs sharply etched portraits of individuals of all stations and nationalities to survey the global, technological, and moral backdrop of the cataclysm, including the searing experiences of Japanese trapped in a gigantic firestorm. This riveting account illuminates an historical moment of profound contemporary relevance.” —Richard B. Frank, author of Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War: July 1937–May 1942
Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed.
Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.” James M. Scott reconstructs in granular detail that horrific night, and describes the development of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight “precision” bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing. Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first time commanders deliberately targeted civilians which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.
Drawing on first-person interviews with American pilots and bombardiers and Japanese survivors, air force archives, and oral histories never before published in English, Scott delivers a harrowing and gripping account, and his most important and compelling work to date.
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1 Review
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ABOUT FIRE BOMBING OF tOKYO IN 1944
i WAS 14 AND REMEMBER !!!!! Book is sensational slow read for me very detailed about Air Force formation and generals competing and bombers being developed larger and larger and bombing strategies and debate about fire bombing Tokyo where houses were made of cardboard and civilian casualties would amount in thousands. Much detail abut use of bombing in Europe as well as South Pacific How Air Force got better and better at using bombers that were getting bigger and bigger Terrific book