Japan 1944-45 - Mark Lardas

The air campaign that incinerated Japan's cities was the
first and only time that independent air power has won a war.As the United States pushed Imperial Japan
back towards Tokyo Bay, the US Army Air Force deployed the first of a new bomber
to the theater. The B-29 Superfortress was complex, troubled, and hugely
advanced. It was the most expensive weapons system of the war, and formidably
capable. But at the time, no strategic bombing campaign had ever brought
about a nation's surrender. Not only that, but Japan was half a world away,
and the US had no airfields even within the extraordinary range of the B-29.
This analysis explains why the B-29s struggled at first, and how General LeMay devised radical and devastating tactics that began to systematically incinerate Japanese cities and industries and eliminate its maritime trade with aerial mining. It explains how and why this campaign was so uniquely successful, and how gaps in Japan's defences contributed to the B-29s' success.