Bombing of Tokyo

Rare card · No. 39977

Tokyo was bombed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in a series of air raids on Japan, primarily launched during the closing campaigns of the Pacific Theatre of World War II in 1944–1945, prior to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The strikes conducted by the USAAF on the night of 9–10 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, constitute the single deadliest and most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history. Sixteen square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless. The U.S. mounted the Doolittle Raid, a small-scale air raid on Tokyo by carrier-based long-range bombers, in April 1942. However, strategic bombing and urban area bombing of Japan only began at scale in 1944 after the long-range B-29 Superfortress bomber entered service. Superfortresses were first deployed from China and thereafter from the Mariana Islands, after they were seized from Japanese forces...

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