The XX Bomber Command headquarters was established at Kharagpur, India, in late March under the command of Brig. Gen. Wolfe. Four bases near Calcutta were set up to receive the B-29s, and the first plane arrived on April 2, 1944, flown by Brig. Gen. LaVerne ‘Blondie’ Saunders, the new commander of the 58th Bomb Wing, after an 11,530-mile journey via Gander in Newfoundland, Marrakesh, Cairo and Karachi.

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Over the next month, B-29s began to arrive in the CBI, but not without incident. After five B-29s crashed near Karachi due to overheated engines, the entire fleet was grounded. The problem was traced to high ground temperatures in India that exceeded the engines’ normal operating limits. Further modifications were made to the engine cooling baffles, oil lubrication tubes and cowl flaps, but those changes only lessened the difficulties rather than solving the problem. By May 8, 130 B-29s were in India. The forward bases in China were declared usable even if conditions there were far less than ideal. The B-29s, ready or not, were about to go to war.

The transition to combat marked the start of the logistical nightmare that would characterize Operation Matterhorn from beginning to end. Despite the Allies’ best efforts, the airlift capability to support all other operations in the CBI plus the B-29s did not actually exist. The Chinese army was in critical need of supplies because the Japanese had gone on the offensive in May 1944, pushing the battle lines 200 miles farther inland. General Chennault, defending a 1,000-mile frontier, insisted that the B-29s be attached to the Fourteenth Air Force for tactical operations, a request Arnold promptly denied. When B-29 operations resumed, instead of going into combat the bombers were forced to transport their own fuel, spare parts and munitions to the forward bases to stockpile what they would need for a mission. The first combat action actually took place during one of those trips, when a B-29 carrying a load of aviation gas was attacked by six Nakajima Ki.43 Hayabusa, or ‘Oscar,’ fighters. Its crew managed to beat off the attackers using the B-29’s defensive armament of 12 .50-caliber guns.

Combat Operations Begin

The first target would not be Japan but the Makasan rail facilities in Bangkok, Thailand. On June 5, 1944, 98 Superforts led by General Saunders took off on the 2,261-mile mission, the longest thus far attempted in the war. En route, 14 B-29s were forced to abort the mission due to overheated engines, and the remainder arrived to find the target obscured by weather. After a confused, radar-assisted bombing run, only 18 bombs hit the target. On the way back, 42 planes were forced to divert to other airfields due to low fuel, while five B-29s crashed on landing.

In the wake of that fiasco, Wolfe was ordered to attack Japan with a minimum of 70 B-29s by June 15. It was a tall order, especially considering that he had only 86 airplanes equipped with the bomb bay tanks that would enable them to reach Japan — and with an expected abort rate of 25 to 30 percent, getting that many planes over the target looked doubtful. Using the B-29s as transports again, it took another 10 days to move fuel, bombs and spares for the mission from India to the forward bases.

Since the B-29s, even with bomb bay tanks, were only capable of reaching Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese Home Island, the Joint Chiefs decided the primary target would be the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata, believed to produce 24 percent of Japan’s steel capacity. Despite the aircrews’ lack of night bombing experience, they were ordered to fly the mission at night in a stream rather than in formation. The weakness of this approach was that each plane would have to find and bomb the target individually.

On June 15, 68 B-29s, each carrying 2 tons of bombs, took off for the first raid against the Japanese mainland in more than two years. One airplane crashed on takeoff, and four more aborted with engine problems. Seven hours later, 47 B-29s found a blacked-out target almost completely obscured by smoke and haze. The other planes in the stream had either jettisoned their bomb loads en route because of mechanical problems, or tried to bomb targets of opportunity. Of those that found Yawata, 15 tried to make a visual approach, and the others depended on radar (the AN/APQ-13 mapping radar system that was still largely experimental). Poststrike photos revealed that only one bomb landed near the target — the steel mill was not even scratched. One B-29 was shot down by flak, and six more were lost in accidents. The mission was nevertheless hailed as a success by the American press — Japan had been attacked.

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