Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

As the Japanese descended the gangway to the waiting motor launch, the drone of aircraft engines was heard in the south. They looked up as the drone gradually ascended to a roar. A hundred B-29s thundered overhead at low altitude, under the cloud ceiling, in precisely spaced formation. Then came an armada of 450 carrier planes, Hellcats, and Corsairs, from Task Force 38. They approached from the east, crossing the track of the B-29s at right angles, and continued over Yokohama and Tokyo. The carrier planes were stacked from about 200 to 400 feet, nearly masthead altitude, lower than the Superforts. The flyover lasted for a full thirty minutes. The engines of the low-flying warplanes were so loud that men on the deck of the Missouri had to raise their voices to make themselves heard. Mick Carney called it “a terrific show, awe-inspiring,” and added that the massed aerial parade “would certainly have given pause to anybody that wanted to start anything again.”56