The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

by Richard Rhodes

A bombardier who flew through the black turbulence above the conflagration remembers it as “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever known.”2230, 2231 In the shallower canals of Shitamachi, where people submerged themselves to escape the fire, the water boiled. The Sumida River stopped the conflagration from sweeping more than 15.8 square miles of the city. The Strategic Bombing Survey estimates that “probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equivalent period of] time in the history of man.” The fire storm at Dresden may have killed more people but not in so short a space of time. More than 100,000 men, women and children died in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945; a million were injured, at least 41,000 seriously; a million in all lost their homes. Two thousand tons of incendiaries delivered that punishment—in the modern notation, two kilotons. But the wind, not the weight of bombs alone, created the conflagration, and therefore the efficiency of the slaughter was in some sense still in part an act of God. Hap Arnold sent LeMay a triumphant telex: CONGRATULATIONS. THIS MISSION SHOWS YOUR CREWS HAVE GOT THE GUTS FOR ANYTHING.2232 Certainly LeMay did; having gambled and succeeded, he quickly pushed on. His B-29’s firebombed Nagoya on March 11; firebombed Osaka by radar on March 13; firebombed Kobe on March 16—stocks of M69’s were running low and M17A1 clusters of 4-pound magnesium thermite bombs, less effective, had to be substi...