Pacific · United States vs Japan
Firebombing of Tokyo
10 March 1945
In the night of 9-10 March 1945, 279 B-29s attacked Tokyo at low altitude with incendiaries under LeMay's new tactics. The resulting firestorm burned out sixteen square miles of the city's most crowded districts and killed an estimated 100,000 people, the most destructive air raid in history. Similar raids on Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe followed in the next ten days.
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— Meetinghouse
279 B-29s of XXI Bomber Command attacked Tokyo from between 5,000 and 9,000 feet on the night of 9-10 March, stripped of guns and loaded with incendiaries. Pathfinders marked the target with a cross of fire over the Asakusa and Honjo districts at about 00:08 and the main force bombed for close to three hours; a 30-knot wind carried the fires together into a firestorm. About 41 square kilometres of the most crowded part of the city burned out, an estimated 100,000 people were killed and a million were left homeless; fourteen B-29s were lost.
