334 B-29s took off to raid on the night of 9�10 March (“Operation Meetinghouse”), Fourteen B-29s were lost. Approximately 16 square miles (41 km2) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died, more immediate deaths than either of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated: 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 124,711 casualties including both killed and wounded and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. Richard Rhodes, historian, put deaths at over 100,000, injuries at a million and homeless residents at a million. These casualty and damage figures could be low
The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to me arguably low in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors’ accounts. With an average of 103,000 inhabitants per square mile (396 people per hectare) and peak levels as high as 135,000 per square mile (521 people per hectare), the highest density of any industrial city in the world, and with firefighting measures ludicrously inadequate to the task, 15.8 square miles (41 km2) of Tokyo were destroyed on a night when fierce winds whipped the flames and walls of fire blocked tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. An estimated 1.5 million people lived in the burned out areas.
The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9/10 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II; greater than Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki as single events.
So 334 Strategic bombers bomb Tokyo and kill A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE, displace over A MILLION destroying SIXTEEN SQUARE MILES of city in TWO DAYS,
AND ONLY 14 BOMBERS WENT DOWN, out of THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FOUR.
Thats a 96% survivor rate on the bombers.
300 deaths and 3 THOUSAND displaced PER bomber.
On 14 February 1942, the Area bombing directive was issued to Bomber Command. Bombing was to be “focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular of the industrial workers.” Though it was never explicitly declared, this was the nearest that the British got to a declaration of unrestricted aerial bombing � Directive 22 said “You are accordingly authorised to use your forces without restriction”, and then listing a series of primary targets which included Essen, Duisburg, D�sseldorf, and Cologne. Secondary targets included Braunschweig, L�beck, Rostock, Bremen, Kiel, Hanover, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Stuttgart, and Schweinfurt. The directive stated that “operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civilian population, and in particular, the industrial workers”. Lest there be any confusion, Sir Charles Portal wrote to Air Chief Marshal Norman Bottomley on 15 February "…I suppose it is clear that the aiming points will be the built-up areas, and not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories". Factories were no longer targets.
The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this, we must achieve two things: first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction and (ii) fear of death.“[129]”
Id say mission accomplished
And you call them overrated. WOW yeah thats overrated.
