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A Prank Led to America’s First Nominated Female to Office, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 13, 2019 33 min

16. Bombing Japan Into Submission

B-29s dropping incendiaries over Japan. Wikimedia

B-29 aircrews were appalled at Curtis LeMay’s directives to bomb at lower altitudes, and to do so without defensive weapons, fearing that they would get slaughtered. However, LeMay’s tactics worked, resulting in the incineration of Japanese cities and the devastation of Japan, without corresponding devastation of B-29 squadrons.

Japan was reeling from the months of mounting destruction inflicted by Super Fortresses by the time the B-29s Enola Gay and Bock’s Car delivered the atomic coup de grace. B-29s continued in American service for years after WWII, seeing action again during the Korean War, before they were retired in 1960. A reverse-engineered Soviet copy, the Tu-4, flew for the Red Air Force until the mid-1960s.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.