蒋介石是浙江人，故意把杭州做为不设防区，让日本人不费一弹登录杭州湾，在苏州也不打，在上海租界边上打打做样子给欧美人看，在南京表演性的抵抗一下。到中部西部开始死打，所谓的武汉保卫战，长沙几次保卫战，等。B29轰炸武汉汉口，火烧长沙老城，桂林老城，都应该是蒋介石的决定，蒋政府和美军低级军官包括李梅将军都不可能做这种战略性的决定的。蒋介石的南京政府其实就是长三角政府，根本不是中国的国家政府。
盟军B29多次空袭武汉主要是汉口，扔下1500吨燃烧弹（后来东京大轰炸也就1500吨燃烧弹），炸毁7000栋租界洋楼，一元路到黄浦路，江边到铁路边的3公里×5公里=15平方公里的日租界被炸光。
The US Firebombing of Wuhan, Part 1
It may have cost 40,000 lives, but the US firebombing of the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 1944 is one of the least known chapters of World War 2. Here is a rare account of this tragic event, by Stephen R. MacKinnon, history professor at Arizona State University and author of the book Wuhan 1938. The account is part of a paper which Dr. MacKinnon delivered in early September at an international conference in Chongqing on the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2 in Asia, and it is brought here with his kind permission. This is the first of a two-part series.
On December 18, 1944, the Chinese leadership in Chongqing, namely Chiang Kai-shek, Chen Cheng and He Yingqin, connected the China war with the European theater by approving the tactic of strategic firebombing of the major occupied city of Wuhan. The vehicle was the giant new American B-29 Flying Super Fortress bombers that were brought to Chengdu expressly for the purpose of firebombing Wuhan. The commander of the bombing raid of 92 planes was none other than the youngest two-star general in the US Army Air Force at the time, General Curtis LeMay. A few months later LeMay would become famous for directing the firebombing of Tokyo and a hundred other Japanese cities.
The firebombing of Wuhan drew little attention internationally and was censored in the Chinese press. Yet the physical destruction and loss of life was very heavy. (Chiang Kai-shek in his diary admitted to 40,000.) Hankou (1) was said to have burned for three days.
(…) LeMay was transferred (from Europe) to Asia in the fall of 1944 with a mandate to develop strategic bombing plans for Chinese and Japanese cities (…) Frustrated at first by the ineffectiveness of high-altitude bombing of Japan from China, LeMay began to explore the alternative of low-altitude incendiary or fire bombing (introduced first in the European theater by the British and famously applied at the end of the European war in the destruction of Dresden on February 13, 1945). LeMay planned to use M-69 incendiary bombs, an extremely deadly cocktail of phosphorous and napalm just developed for the purpose by scientists at Harvard University.
The Japanese had been using airbases and railway lines of Wuhan in central China since its capture in October 1938, to wage war and bomb targets in central and southwestern China. Wuhan had been an especially important launching pad for the last big Japanese offensive, beginning in the spring of 1944, known to historians as the Ichigo campaign. This campaign seemed in November-December, after the fall of Guilin, to possibly threaten Chongqing.
Chinese official sources on the subject are understandably limited, but both Chiang Kai-shek’s and Wang Shijie’s diaries mention the bombing — as does the US Ambassador Hurley and others in dispatches. Clearly there was an agreement at the highest level of the Chinese government — on the military side namely Chen Cheng and He Yingqin with US commanders Wedemeyer (2) and Chennault (3). LeMay was given the green light by General Wedemeyer and Minister of War Chen Cheng to firebomb Wuhan in order to destroy its airbases, industrial capacity and railroad lines.
On December 18, ninety-four B-29 Fortress Super bombers took off from airfields outside Chengdu on an operation with the codename Matterhorn loaded with 500 tons of incendiary bombs. For LeMay, this was his first experience with firebombing on a grand scale. For the Chinese leadership in Chongqing, this was a strategic decision resembling earlier ones like the blowing of the dykes of the Yellow River or torching of Changsha and Guilin. A top advisor and Minister (of Propaganda) to Chiang Kai-shek at the time, Wang Shijie, who was a native of Wuhan, expressed regret in his diary; but he agreed that the bombing was necessary — regardless of cost to the city and its civilian population. Wuhan had to be sacrificed.
(To be continued)
1) One of the three major districts in Wuhan. Historically, Wuhan emerged as the conglomeration of three cities: Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang.
2) Albert Wedemeyer, Chiang Kai-shek’s chief of staff and commander of US forces in China.
3) Claire Chennault, commander of 14th Air Force in China.
The US Firebombing of Wuhan, Part 2
One week before Christmas in 1944, nearly 200 American planes raided the Chinese city of Wuhan, dropping 500 tons of incendiary bombs. Thousands of Chinese lives were lost in this incident, which has received very little attention in the intervening decades. Here is a rare account of this tragic event, by Stephen R. MacKinnon, history professor at Arizona State University and author of the book Wuhan 1938. The account is part of a paper which Dr. MacKinnon delivered in early September at an international conference in Chongqing on the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2 in Asia, and it is brought here with his kind permission. This is the second part in the series.
Five hundred tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on Wuhan at low altitude on December 18… Japanese defense was minimal. The tricity complex of Wuhan was destroyed. The city and vicinity is said to have burned for three days! LeMay was pleased, declaring this his first experience with firebombing as a tactical weapon to be a successful experiment.
The rest is history. A few months later, from the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, General LeMay famously directed the low-altitude blanket firebombing of Tokyo (over 1,500 tons of incendiaries in one raid), following up with the carpet bombing of Japan’s other major cities. The effects were devastating and human cost huge (over 100,000 civilians in Tokyo alone). The earlier connection of the firebombing of Japan to the Chinese firebombing and the destruction of Wuhan is not well-known. It remains a kind of historical secret, rarely mentioned today in Chinese sources (or Western for that matter). I have had to rely chiefly on obscure official US military sources.
The most detailed Chinese description of the firebombing of Wuhan that I have so far found is a couple of paragraphs from the Wuhan city gazetteer (my translation, P.H.):
On December 18, 1944, two hundred American fighters and bombers bombed Wuhan in waves, dropping a large number of incendiary bombs over the area between Hankou’s Yiyuan Road and Wuma Road, and from the river bank to the railroad. An area measuring three times five kilometers became a sea of flames, and all buildings were turned into rubble. On December 21, airplanes from the 14th Air Force in coordination with Super Fortresses dropped more than 1,000 tons of bombs on Hankou, setting off huge fires in the slum areas near the docks, spreading for about five kilometers.
On December 28, 1944, US General 兰达 (Lan-da, LeMay?) proposed in Chengdu to make US bombing raids on Wuhan the initial step in a general offensive against Japan. From then on, American air units used Chinese bases to launch repeated bombing of Wuhan. As a result, Hankou’s old government district was reduced to rubble and the densely populated area between Wangjia Alley and Minzu Road was leveled to the ground. The area from Jianghan Road northeast towards the old French and Japanese concessions were transformed into a vast landscape of broken bricks and tiles.
The historical records of Simin Bank on December 2, 1944 contains the following passage: “The horror of the bombings had a severe impact on the people’s morale, and their situation was indescribable. Fearing for their lives, the residents gradually fled from Hankou, and eventually more than one third of the city’s population had left.” “After November 18, there was a breakdown in morale, and the city stopped functioning. People left their homes, and most buildings were empty… Many homes were destroyed beyond repair, and dwellings rented out by the bank were also destroyed.”
According to the records, Wuhan suffered a total of 151,607 casualties during the entire anti-Japanese war. Of these, 96,557 were killed, while 22,389 were seriously injured, and 32,661 sustained light injuries. According to casualty statistics compiled by Hankou city in 1946, more than 20,000 were killed or injured in the December bombings of 1944… (During the war), 7,515 buildings were bombed, including 554 before the fall of the city (in 1938), and 6,951 after. Those bombed by American planes accounted for 92 percent. Compared with Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin and Qingdao, the destruction in Wuhan was considerably worse.
Did the insane American bombing in December 1944, carried out without taking the wellbeing of ordinary people into account, reflect a wish to liberate China as soon as possible? No. The motive was revenge. On December 16, after Japanese forces occupying Wuhan captured three American aviators, they pulled off their uniforms, tied them up, and dragged them through the streets, beating and kicking them on the way, in an extremely bloody spectacle.
In the end, the Japanese soldiers dragged the American aviators to a Japanese temple (outside the current Wuhan city government), where they hanged them and burned the bodies. When news of the execution reached the Americans, they were infuriated and immediately planned revenge. This was why on December 18, more than 170 American planes took off, bombing the entire area between Hankou Yiyuan Road and Huangpu Road, costing the lives of more than 20,000 residents of Wuhan!
Tremendous destruction is noted with tens of thousands of civilians killed. This Chinese source (as well as references on the Internet) suggests that the motive behind the US bombing of Wuhan was simple: revenge for the public torture and execution in Wuhan of three captured American pilots. In the US sources there is no mention of the three pilots. The Chinese and US military leadership had agreed that the strategic purpose was to blunt Japanese offensives in the southwest — and perhaps, it could be argued, this was achieved, By January 1945, the Japanese offensive had been blunted and their armies were beginning to retreat.
1944年12月盟军B29对武汉的大轰炸
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Re: 1944年12月盟军B29对武汉的大轰炸
This is from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey – Military Analysis Division – USSBS Report 67, Air Operations in China, Burma, India, 1947. p 90
Section XI – XX Bomber Command, “In one mission on 18 December 1944, in coordination with the Fourteenth Air Force, a force of 84 B-29s dropped over 500 tons of bombs of incendiaries on Hankow, its only primary mission against a target in China proper. The mission destroyed nearly 300 acres of warehouses and industrial construction.”
Section XI – XX Bomber Command, “In one mission on 18 December 1944, in coordination with the Fourteenth Air Force, a force of 84 B-29s dropped over 500 tons of bombs of incendiaries on Hankow, its only primary mission against a target in China proper. The mission destroyed nearly 300 acres of warehouses and industrial construction.”
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yellowcranetower
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Re: 1944年12月盟军B29对武汉的大轰炸
https://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps511 ... omepg5.htm
"the Joint Chiefs directed LeMay to hit the city with firebombs", 李梅将军是听命于美军最高指挥部，而美军最高指挥部一定要获得蒋介石政府的同意才敢这么干的。
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The former European theater bomber commander continued to experiment with new technologies and tactics and soon imported to China the incendiary weapons being used by the British against Germany. In late 1944, a Japanese offensive in China probed toward the B�29 and Air Transport Command bases around Chengtu and Kunming. To slow the enemy advance, Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault of the Fourteenth Air Force asked for raids on Japanese supplies at Hankow, and the Joint Chiefs directed LeMay to hit the city with firebombs. On December 18, LeMay launched the fire raid, sending eighty-four B�29s in at medium altitude with five hundred tons of incendiary bombs. The attack left Hankow burning for three days, proving the effectiveness of incendiary weapons against the predominantly wooden architecture of the Far East.
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Over the Hump to Matterhorn
In April 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved Operation Matterhorn, a plan for bombing Japanese strategic targets with B�29s based in China. A committee of operations analysts who advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Twentieth Air Force on targets recommended Superfortress attacks on coke ovens and steel factories in Manchuria and Kyushu. Shutting down these key industries would severely cripple the enemy�s war effort. Also on the target list were important enemy harbor facilities and aircraft factories. Wolfe launched the first B�29 Superfortress combat mission on June 5, 1944, against Japanese railroad facilities at Bangkok, Thailand, about 1,000 miles away. Of the ninety-eight bombers that took off from India, seventy-seven hit their targets, dropping 368 tons of bombs. Encouraged by the results, XX Bomber Command prepared for the first raids against Japan.
Ten days later, sixty-eight Superfortresses took off at night from staging bases at Chengtu to bomb the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata on Kyushu, more than 1,500 miles away. The June 15, 1944, mission�the first raid on the Japanese home islands since the Doolittle attack of April 1942�marked the beginning of the strategic bombardment campaign against Japan. Like the Doolittle raid, it achieved little physical destruc-tion. Only forty-seven of the sixty-eight B�29s airborne hit the target area; four aborted with mechanical problems, four crashed, six jettisoned their bombs because of mechanical difficulties, and others bombed secondary targets or targets of opportunity. Only one B�29 was lost to enemy aircraft.
The second full-scale strike did not occur until July 7, 1944. By then, Arnold, impatient with Wolfe�s progress, had replaced him temporarily with Brig. Gen. LaVern G. Saunders, until Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay could arrive from Europe to assume permanent command. Unfortunately, the three-week delay between the first and second missions reflected serious problems that prevented a sustained strategic bombing campaign from China against Japan. Each B�29 mission consumed tremendous quantities of fuel and bombs, which had to be shuttled from India to the China bases over the Himalayas, the world�s highest mountain range. For every Superfortress combat mission, the command flew an average of six B�29 round-trip cargo missions over the Hump. Even after the Air Transport Command took over the logistical supply of the B�29 bases in China at the end of 1944, enough fuel and bombs never seemed to reach Chengtu.
Range presented another problem. Tokyo, in eastern Honshu, lay more than 2,000 miles from the Chinese staging bases, out of reach of the B�29s. Kyushu, in southwestern Japan, was the only one of the major home islands within the 1,600-mile combat radius of the Superfortress.
And the very heavy bomber still suffered mechanical problems that grounded some aircraft and forced others to turn back before dropping their bombs. Even those B�29s that reached the target area often had difficulty in hitting the objective, partly because of extensive cloud cover or high winds. Larger formations could have helped compensate for inaccurate bombing, but Saunders did not have enough B�29s to dispatch large formations. Also, the Twentieth Air Force periodically diverted the Superfortresses from strategic targets to support theater commanders in Southeast Asia and the southwestern Pacific. For these reasons, the XX Bomber Command and the B�29s largely failed to fulfill their strategic promise.
On August 20, LeMay arrived to breathe new energy into the XX Bomber Command. The former Eighth Air Force bomber pilot and group commander had achieved remarkable success with strategic bombing operations in Europe, testing new concepts such as stagger formations, the combat box, and straight-and-level bombing runs. The youngest two-star general in the AAF had also revised tactics, tightened and expanded formations, and enhanced training for greater bombing precision. He inaugurated a lead-crew training school so that formations could learn to drop as a unit on cue from the airplane designated as the lead ship.
During his first two months at XX Bomber Command, LeMay had little more success than Wolfe or Saunders. The command continued to average only about one sortie a month per airplane against Japan�s home islands. When MacArthur invaded the Philippines in October 1944, LeMay diverted his B-29s from bombing Japanese steel facilities to striking enemy aircraft factories and bases in Formosa, Kyushu, and Manchuria.
Meanwhile, LeMay gained the support of Communist leader Mao Tse-tung, who controlled parts of northern China. Willing to help against a common enemy, Mao agreed to assist downed American airmen and to locate in northern China a weather station that would provide better forecasts for the XX Bomber Command�s raids on the Japanese in Manchuria and Kyushu. Hoping to gain American recognition of his own regime, Mao suggested that the Americans set up B�29 bases in northern China like those in Chi-ang Kai-shek�s area of control in southern China. LeMay declined, however, because he found it difficult enough to supply the airfields at Chengtu.
The former European theater bomber commander continued to experiment with new technologies and tactics and soon imported to China the incendiary weapons being used by the British against Germany. In late 1944, a Japanese offensive in China probed toward the B�29 and Air Transport Command bases around Chengtu and Kunming. To slow the enemy advance, Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault of the Fourteenth Air Force asked for raids on Japanese supplies at Hankow, and the Joint Chiefs directed LeMay to hit the city with firebombs. On December 18, LeMay launched the fire raid, sending eighty-four B�29s in at medium altitude with five hundred tons of incendiary bombs. The attack left Hankow burning for three days, proving the effectiveness of incendiary weapons against the predominantly wooden architecture of the Far East.
By late 1944, American bombers were raiding Japan from the recently captured Marianas, making operations from the vulnerable and logistically impractical China bases unnecessary. In January 1945, the XX Bomber Command abandoned its bases in China and concentrated 58th Bomb Wing resources in India. The transfer signaled the end of Matterhorn. During the same month, LeMay moved to the Marianas, leaving command of the XX Bomber Command in India to Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey. Between January and March, Ramey�s B�29s assisted Mountbatten in southeastern Asia, supporting British and Indian ground forces in Burma by targeting rail and port facilities in Indochina, Thailand, and Burma. More distant targets included refineries and airfields in Singapore, Malaya, and the East Indies. The 58th, the only operational wing of the XX Bomber Command, remained in India until the end of March 1945, when it moved to the Marianas to join the XXI Bomber Command.
At the end of the war, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey delicately judged the B�29 operations against Japan from China to be �not decisive.� Matterhorn had failed to achieve its strategic objectives, largely because of logistical problems, the bomber�s mechanical difficulties, the vulnerability of Chinese staging bases, and the extreme range required to reach key Japanese cities. Although the B�29s achieved some success when diverted to support Chiang Kai-shek�s forces in China, MacArthur�s offensives in the Philippines, and Mountbatten�s efforts in Burma, they generally accomplished little more than the B�17s and B�24s assigned to the Fourteenth, Fifth, Thirteenth, and Tenth Air Forces.
Chennault considered the Twentieth Air Force a liability and thought that its supplies of fuel and bombs could have been more profitably used by his Fourteenth Air Force. The XX Bomber Command consumed al-most 15 percent of the Hump airlift tonnage per month during Matterhorn. Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, who replaced Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell as American senior commander in the China theater, agreed with Chennault. The two were happy to see the B�29s leave China and India.
Yet, despite those objections, Matterhorn did benefit the Allied effort. Using the China bases bolstered Chinese morale and, more important, it allowed the strategic bombing of Japan to begin six months before bases were available in the Marianas. The Matterhorn raids against the Japanese home islands also demonstrated the B�29�s effectiveness against Japanese fighters and antiaircraft artillery. Operations from the Marianas would profit from the streamlined organization and improved tactics developed on the Asian mainland.
"the Joint Chiefs directed LeMay to hit the city with firebombs", 李梅将军是听命于美军最高指挥部，而美军最高指挥部一定要获得蒋介石政府的同意才敢这么干的。
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The former European theater bomber commander continued to experiment with new technologies and tactics and soon imported to China the incendiary weapons being used by the British against Germany. In late 1944, a Japanese offensive in China probed toward the B�29 and Air Transport Command bases around Chengtu and Kunming. To slow the enemy advance, Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault of the Fourteenth Air Force asked for raids on Japanese supplies at Hankow, and the Joint Chiefs directed LeMay to hit the city with firebombs. On December 18, LeMay launched the fire raid, sending eighty-four B�29s in at medium altitude with five hundred tons of incendiary bombs. The attack left Hankow burning for three days, proving the effectiveness of incendiary weapons against the predominantly wooden architecture of the Far East.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the Hump to Matterhorn
In April 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved Operation Matterhorn, a plan for bombing Japanese strategic targets with B�29s based in China. A committee of operations analysts who advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Twentieth Air Force on targets recommended Superfortress attacks on coke ovens and steel factories in Manchuria and Kyushu. Shutting down these key industries would severely cripple the enemy�s war effort. Also on the target list were important enemy harbor facilities and aircraft factories. Wolfe launched the first B�29 Superfortress combat mission on June 5, 1944, against Japanese railroad facilities at Bangkok, Thailand, about 1,000 miles away. Of the ninety-eight bombers that took off from India, seventy-seven hit their targets, dropping 368 tons of bombs. Encouraged by the results, XX Bomber Command prepared for the first raids against Japan.
Ten days later, sixty-eight Superfortresses took off at night from staging bases at Chengtu to bomb the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata on Kyushu, more than 1,500 miles away. The June 15, 1944, mission�the first raid on the Japanese home islands since the Doolittle attack of April 1942�marked the beginning of the strategic bombardment campaign against Japan. Like the Doolittle raid, it achieved little physical destruc-tion. Only forty-seven of the sixty-eight B�29s airborne hit the target area; four aborted with mechanical problems, four crashed, six jettisoned their bombs because of mechanical difficulties, and others bombed secondary targets or targets of opportunity. Only one B�29 was lost to enemy aircraft.
The second full-scale strike did not occur until July 7, 1944. By then, Arnold, impatient with Wolfe�s progress, had replaced him temporarily with Brig. Gen. LaVern G. Saunders, until Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay could arrive from Europe to assume permanent command. Unfortunately, the three-week delay between the first and second missions reflected serious problems that prevented a sustained strategic bombing campaign from China against Japan. Each B�29 mission consumed tremendous quantities of fuel and bombs, which had to be shuttled from India to the China bases over the Himalayas, the world�s highest mountain range. For every Superfortress combat mission, the command flew an average of six B�29 round-trip cargo missions over the Hump. Even after the Air Transport Command took over the logistical supply of the B�29 bases in China at the end of 1944, enough fuel and bombs never seemed to reach Chengtu.
Range presented another problem. Tokyo, in eastern Honshu, lay more than 2,000 miles from the Chinese staging bases, out of reach of the B�29s. Kyushu, in southwestern Japan, was the only one of the major home islands within the 1,600-mile combat radius of the Superfortress.
And the very heavy bomber still suffered mechanical problems that grounded some aircraft and forced others to turn back before dropping their bombs. Even those B�29s that reached the target area often had difficulty in hitting the objective, partly because of extensive cloud cover or high winds. Larger formations could have helped compensate for inaccurate bombing, but Saunders did not have enough B�29s to dispatch large formations. Also, the Twentieth Air Force periodically diverted the Superfortresses from strategic targets to support theater commanders in Southeast Asia and the southwestern Pacific. For these reasons, the XX Bomber Command and the B�29s largely failed to fulfill their strategic promise.
On August 20, LeMay arrived to breathe new energy into the XX Bomber Command. The former Eighth Air Force bomber pilot and group commander had achieved remarkable success with strategic bombing operations in Europe, testing new concepts such as stagger formations, the combat box, and straight-and-level bombing runs. The youngest two-star general in the AAF had also revised tactics, tightened and expanded formations, and enhanced training for greater bombing precision. He inaugurated a lead-crew training school so that formations could learn to drop as a unit on cue from the airplane designated as the lead ship.
During his first two months at XX Bomber Command, LeMay had little more success than Wolfe or Saunders. The command continued to average only about one sortie a month per airplane against Japan�s home islands. When MacArthur invaded the Philippines in October 1944, LeMay diverted his B-29s from bombing Japanese steel facilities to striking enemy aircraft factories and bases in Formosa, Kyushu, and Manchuria.
Meanwhile, LeMay gained the support of Communist leader Mao Tse-tung, who controlled parts of northern China. Willing to help against a common enemy, Mao agreed to assist downed American airmen and to locate in northern China a weather station that would provide better forecasts for the XX Bomber Command�s raids on the Japanese in Manchuria and Kyushu. Hoping to gain American recognition of his own regime, Mao suggested that the Americans set up B�29 bases in northern China like those in Chi-ang Kai-shek�s area of control in southern China. LeMay declined, however, because he found it difficult enough to supply the airfields at Chengtu.
The former European theater bomber commander continued to experiment with new technologies and tactics and soon imported to China the incendiary weapons being used by the British against Germany. In late 1944, a Japanese offensive in China probed toward the B�29 and Air Transport Command bases around Chengtu and Kunming. To slow the enemy advance, Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault of the Fourteenth Air Force asked for raids on Japanese supplies at Hankow, and the Joint Chiefs directed LeMay to hit the city with firebombs. On December 18, LeMay launched the fire raid, sending eighty-four B�29s in at medium altitude with five hundred tons of incendiary bombs. The attack left Hankow burning for three days, proving the effectiveness of incendiary weapons against the predominantly wooden architecture of the Far East.
By late 1944, American bombers were raiding Japan from the recently captured Marianas, making operations from the vulnerable and logistically impractical China bases unnecessary. In January 1945, the XX Bomber Command abandoned its bases in China and concentrated 58th Bomb Wing resources in India. The transfer signaled the end of Matterhorn. During the same month, LeMay moved to the Marianas, leaving command of the XX Bomber Command in India to Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey. Between January and March, Ramey�s B�29s assisted Mountbatten in southeastern Asia, supporting British and Indian ground forces in Burma by targeting rail and port facilities in Indochina, Thailand, and Burma. More distant targets included refineries and airfields in Singapore, Malaya, and the East Indies. The 58th, the only operational wing of the XX Bomber Command, remained in India until the end of March 1945, when it moved to the Marianas to join the XXI Bomber Command.
At the end of the war, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey delicately judged the B�29 operations against Japan from China to be �not decisive.� Matterhorn had failed to achieve its strategic objectives, largely because of logistical problems, the bomber�s mechanical difficulties, the vulnerability of Chinese staging bases, and the extreme range required to reach key Japanese cities. Although the B�29s achieved some success when diverted to support Chiang Kai-shek�s forces in China, MacArthur�s offensives in the Philippines, and Mountbatten�s efforts in Burma, they generally accomplished little more than the B�17s and B�24s assigned to the Fourteenth, Fifth, Thirteenth, and Tenth Air Forces.
Chennault considered the Twentieth Air Force a liability and thought that its supplies of fuel and bombs could have been more profitably used by his Fourteenth Air Force. The XX Bomber Command consumed al-most 15 percent of the Hump airlift tonnage per month during Matterhorn. Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, who replaced Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell as American senior commander in the China theater, agreed with Chennault. The two were happy to see the B�29s leave China and India.
Yet, despite those objections, Matterhorn did benefit the Allied effort. Using the China bases bolstered Chinese morale and, more important, it allowed the strategic bombing of Japan to begin six months before bases were available in the Marianas. The Matterhorn raids against the Japanese home islands also demonstrated the B�29�s effectiveness against Japanese fighters and antiaircraft artillery. Operations from the Marianas would profit from the streamlined organization and improved tactics developed on the Asian mainland.
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yellowcranetower
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Re: 1944年12月盟军B29对武汉的大轰炸
Fire from the skies
We conclude our journey through the fiery history of modern Hankou by
examining possibly the worst conflagration in the city’s history, which also happens
to be one of the most poorly documented. It occurred in the midst of the Second
Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). In 1938, Wuhan, now unified as a single city, had
served as the provisional capital of unoccupied China, in the period between the
Nationalist retreat from Nanjing and the final evacuation to the wartime capital of
90 ‘Bye-Laws of the Special District of Hankow’.
91 On fires during the 1931 flood, see Courtney, Nature of Disaster, 121–2, 138–9.
International Review of Environmental History • Volume 4, Issue 2, 2018
90
Chongqing.92 During this period, Hankou suffered sustained aerial bombardment
from the Japanese, as it was catapulted into the front line of the global fight against
fascism. Yet the devastation caused by this well-known assault paled in comparison
to that wrought by the much less publicised American bombing of Wuhan in 1944.
By this stage, the city had passed into the hands of the collaborationist regime
headed by Wang Jingwei. It had become an important staging post for the Japanese
military. Having failed to make a dent in the local defences with six months of highaltitude bombing, Major General Claire Chennault was finally given permission to
launch a low-altitude incendiary bombing mission. On 18 December, 96 American
Superfortress bombers dropped 511 tons of incendiaries on Hankou.93 Amidst
the cocktail of destructive weapons deployed, this was one of the first ever uses
of napalm, a terrifying new form of industrialised fire, made from a number of
familiar ingredients. The base of napalm was petroleum, which was mixed with
various powders to form a sticky gel that adhered to surfaces, including brick and
skin. This hydrocarbon fuel, like kerosene before it, was dug from American wells
and shipped in bulk to China. The detonator was made from white phosphorus,
which ignites when exposed to oxygen, the same chemical reaction that is the basis
of friction matches. It had taken the brightest minds of Harvard University to work
out how to mix napalm in 1942, yet the actual bombs were designed by a company
well-versed in the trade in fire—Standard Oil.94
Before long the bombers flying over Hankou could barely see the city they were
destroying as the incendiaries they were dropping had obscured it with smoke. This
was of little concern. The Hankou raid marked a significant shift in the approach
the United States took to aerial warfare. Other belligerents, both Axis and Allied,
had been employing indiscriminate area bombing since early in the war. Britain had
created the first firestorm in the world by dropping magnesium bombs on Hamburg
in July 1943, raising the city’s temperature to 1,500°F (816°C).95 Before Hankou,
however, the United States had remained steadfastly committed to precision
bombing, a tactic designed to minimise civilian casualties. Now they decided to
forego this moral stance, unleashing the same kind of indiscriminate incendiary
bombing on the city that would soon devastate the urban population of Japan.
Quite why the citizens of Wuhan, a city under foreign occupation, were granted
less consideration than those living in Nazi Germany is not clear.96 There is much
about this chapter of the war that remains mysterious, including the death toll of
the raid, which some Chinese historians have claimed may have been as high as
20,000. If true, then it would mean that the Wuhan raid killed almost as many
people as the infamous allied bombing of Dresden, which is now believed to have
been responsible for approximately 25,000 casualties.97
The amnesia that surrounds the raid is perhaps the product of the strict censorship
in place at the time, which ensured that there is little documentary evidence.
More likely, it is because this episode does not fit comfortably with anyone’s war
narrative—neither Chinese, Japanese nor American. This most devastating of fires
does, however, offer a fitting denouement for our exploration of conflagrations in
modern Hankou, exemplifying as it does many of the processes that had helped to
burn the city over the past century. It was ignited by a lethal mixture of industrial
fuels and incendiary politics, as most fires had been since the mid-nineteenth century.
It burned its way through the collective labour and capital investments of thousands
of local citizens, who had attempted to build a fireproof city, only to discover that
the nature of fire had evolved faster than their capacity to resist it. Finally, those
who pumped the oil and mined the phosphorus at a distance were not aware of the
consequences of their actions, whilst those who lit the flames seemed to forget what
they had done almost instantaneously. This erasure ensured that later generations
remained unaware of a shared global history of markets, materials and politics that
had manifested itself in localised flames. Instead, they were left to ponder why an
exotic foreign city seemed to lag so far behind the modern world when it came to
fire safety. Meanwhile, the people of Hankou brushed off the ash and rebuilt their
homes once again.
We conclude our journey through the fiery history of modern Hankou by
examining possibly the worst conflagration in the city’s history, which also happens
to be one of the most poorly documented. It occurred in the midst of the Second
Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). In 1938, Wuhan, now unified as a single city, had
served as the provisional capital of unoccupied China, in the period between the
Nationalist retreat from Nanjing and the final evacuation to the wartime capital of
90 ‘Bye-Laws of the Special District of Hankow’.
91 On fires during the 1931 flood, see Courtney, Nature of Disaster, 121–2, 138–9.
International Review of Environmental History • Volume 4, Issue 2, 2018
90
Chongqing.92 During this period, Hankou suffered sustained aerial bombardment
from the Japanese, as it was catapulted into the front line of the global fight against
fascism. Yet the devastation caused by this well-known assault paled in comparison
to that wrought by the much less publicised American bombing of Wuhan in 1944.
By this stage, the city had passed into the hands of the collaborationist regime
headed by Wang Jingwei. It had become an important staging post for the Japanese
military. Having failed to make a dent in the local defences with six months of highaltitude bombing, Major General Claire Chennault was finally given permission to
launch a low-altitude incendiary bombing mission. On 18 December, 96 American
Superfortress bombers dropped 511 tons of incendiaries on Hankou.93 Amidst
the cocktail of destructive weapons deployed, this was one of the first ever uses
of napalm, a terrifying new form of industrialised fire, made from a number of
familiar ingredients. The base of napalm was petroleum, which was mixed with
various powders to form a sticky gel that adhered to surfaces, including brick and
skin. This hydrocarbon fuel, like kerosene before it, was dug from American wells
and shipped in bulk to China. The detonator was made from white phosphorus,
which ignites when exposed to oxygen, the same chemical reaction that is the basis
of friction matches. It had taken the brightest minds of Harvard University to work
out how to mix napalm in 1942, yet the actual bombs were designed by a company
well-versed in the trade in fire—Standard Oil.94
Before long the bombers flying over Hankou could barely see the city they were
destroying as the incendiaries they were dropping had obscured it with smoke. This
was of little concern. The Hankou raid marked a significant shift in the approach
the United States took to aerial warfare. Other belligerents, both Axis and Allied,
had been employing indiscriminate area bombing since early in the war. Britain had
created the first firestorm in the world by dropping magnesium bombs on Hamburg
in July 1943, raising the city’s temperature to 1,500°F (816°C).95 Before Hankou,
however, the United States had remained steadfastly committed to precision
bombing, a tactic designed to minimise civilian casualties. Now they decided to
forego this moral stance, unleashing the same kind of indiscriminate incendiary
bombing on the city that would soon devastate the urban population of Japan.
Quite why the citizens of Wuhan, a city under foreign occupation, were granted
less consideration than those living in Nazi Germany is not clear.96 There is much
about this chapter of the war that remains mysterious, including the death toll of
the raid, which some Chinese historians have claimed may have been as high as
20,000. If true, then it would mean that the Wuhan raid killed almost as many
people as the infamous allied bombing of Dresden, which is now believed to have
been responsible for approximately 25,000 casualties.97
The amnesia that surrounds the raid is perhaps the product of the strict censorship
in place at the time, which ensured that there is little documentary evidence.
More likely, it is because this episode does not fit comfortably with anyone’s war
narrative—neither Chinese, Japanese nor American. This most devastating of fires
does, however, offer a fitting denouement for our exploration of conflagrations in
modern Hankou, exemplifying as it does many of the processes that had helped to
burn the city over the past century. It was ignited by a lethal mixture of industrial
fuels and incendiary politics, as most fires had been since the mid-nineteenth century.
It burned its way through the collective labour and capital investments of thousands
of local citizens, who had attempted to build a fireproof city, only to discover that
the nature of fire had evolved faster than their capacity to resist it. Finally, those
who pumped the oil and mined the phosphorus at a distance were not aware of the
consequences of their actions, whilst those who lit the flames seemed to forget what
they had done almost instantaneously. This erasure ensured that later generations
remained unaware of a shared global history of markets, materials and politics that
had manifested itself in localised flames. Instead, they were left to ponder why an
exotic foreign city seemed to lag so far behind the modern world when it came to
fire safety. Meanwhile, the people of Hankou brushed off the ash and rebuilt their
homes once again.
- 附件
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- THE INDUSTRIALISATION OF FIRE DISASTERS IN HANKOU, CHINA, 1849–1944.pdf
- (1.76 MiB) 下载 12 次
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yellowcranetower
- 帖子： 1178
- 注册时间： 周二 7月 14, 2020 5:30 pm
Re: 1944年12月盟军B29对武汉的大轰炸
“Quite why the citizens of Wuhan, a city under foreign occupation, were granted less consideration than those living in Nazi Germany is not clear.”96
（对蒋介石政府和盟军指挥部来说），为什么被日本人占领的武汉城区的中国本国市民，地位还不如纳粹德国的德国本土居民，没有历史资料告诉我们。
（对蒋介石政府和盟军指挥部来说），为什么被日本人占领的武汉城区的中国本国市民，地位还不如纳粹德国的德国本土居民，没有历史资料告诉我们。
-
yellowcranetower
- 帖子： 1178
- 注册时间： 周二 7月 14, 2020 5:30 pm
Re: 1944年12月盟军B29对武汉的大轰炸
“There is much about this chapter of the war that remains mysterious, including the death toll of the raid, which some Chinese historians have claimed may have been as high as 20,000. If true, then it would mean that the Wuhan raid killed almost as many people as the infamous allied bombing of Dresden, which is now believed to have been responsible for approximately 25,000 casualties."97
武汉汉口在这次空袭中平民死亡人数达两万人，相当于二战中最臭名昭著的德累斯顿轰炸死亡的平民人数了。
武汉汉口在这次空袭中平民死亡人数达两万人，相当于二战中最臭名昭著的德累斯顿轰炸死亡的平民人数了。
-
yellowcranetower
- 帖子： 1178
- 注册时间： 周二 7月 14, 2020 5:30 pm
Re: 1944年12月盟军B29对武汉的大轰炸
"The amnesia that surrounds the raid is perhaps the product of the strict censorship in place at the time, which ensured that there is little documentary evidence. "
武汉汉口1944年大轰炸的这次历史事件被（蒋介石政府的）媒体严格保密，以便销毁证据。
武汉汉口1944年大轰炸的这次历史事件被（蒋介石政府的）媒体严格保密，以便销毁证据。