After that, when he was pressed to mount further attacks, Wolfe was resistant, telling Arnold that it would be impossible to stage new raids against Japan any time soon. Wolfe was summarily ordered to return to Washington, with Saunders put in temporary command. New mission orders came from the Joint Chiefs, and on July 7, 1944, 18 B-29s set out to attack four different industrial targets on Kyushu, causing negligible damage. The steel complex at Anshan, Manchuria, was bombed on July 9. Of 72 B-29s participating, one crashed on takeoff, 11 were forced to abort and four more were lost returning from the mission. Once again, bombing results were graded as poor. In August, 56 B-29s flew a 4,030-mile raid — the longest of the war — from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to bomb oil storage facilities in Palembang, Sumatra (Indonesia). Other B-29s laid mines in the Moesi River in Sumatra, and a third group attacked Nagasaki in western Kyushu. Again, damage to targets was minor.

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The B-29 operations were a logistical mishmash compounded by a weird command structure, poor operational control and inadequate training. But not all the news was bad: The aircrews were learning to handle the B-29. They discovered, for example, that engine temperatures could be kept within tolerable limits if the takeoff run was extended and airspeed was allowed to build before beginning the climb.

Change of Command

On August 29, 1944, Curtis LeMay, the youngest major general in the U.S. Army Air Forces, arrived in India to take over XX Bomber Command. LeMay was not part of Hap Arnold’s inner circle as Wolfe had been, but had distinguished himself as a group commander, then as an air division commander with the Eighth Air Force in Europe, where he established the theater-wide pattern for heavy bombardment operations. After touring his new command, LeMay decided it needed to be reorganized: tactics, combat procedures, training, internal organization — everything. One of the first changes he made was to establish a school to train lead crews, who would find and mark the targets on missions. He discovered that many of the maintenance problems associated with combat operations stemmed from the way the groups were organized.

While XX Bomber Command was struggling in the CBI, a new development was unfolding in the Central Pacific. The island of Saipan, captured by U.S. Marines in July 1944, was within 1,600 miles of Honshu. More important, it could be resupplied by sea. The decision was made to send in the B-29s of the newly organized XXI Bomber Command as soon as the base could be readied. The 73rd Bomb Wing (Very Heavy), which had been training in the States since March, was slated to leave for Saipan in October.

The B-29s of the 58th Bomb Wing resumed combat operations in September, flying another raid against Anshan, in Manchuria. The results were mediocre. In mid-October, LeMay was ordered to attack various targets in Formosa in support of the planned invasion of the Philippines. On October 25, the B-29s attacked the Omura aircraft factory on Kyushu with the best results so far — due in part to the decision to use a 2-to-1 mix of incendiary and high-explosive bombs. Because of supply problems, however, particularly fuel shortages, further efforts to fly more missions against Japan were severely hampered. That caused LeMay to reduce the number of missions flown from the forward bases in China in favor of missions against Singapore, Borneo, Malaya and Sumatra, which could be staged out of India.

End of the Road

LeMay was fast discovering that to get anything approved he had to battle not only the complex logistical problems and command issues within the CBI, but also the headquarters staff in Washington. The Japanese were pressing the Chinese armies farther westward, threatening the China bases, and the relationship between Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek was unraveling. On top of that, the 58th’s B-29s, the earliest production models, were beginning to wear out, in part because they had done double duty as transports. LeMay began to empathize more with Wolfe, realizing that many of the difficulties had not been under the former commander’s control.

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