英文记载:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/V/AAF-V-5.html
Craven, Wesley Frank; Cate, James Lea. The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki - June 1944 to August 1945. The Army Air Forces in World War II 5. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1953.
in communications the 40th Group did not receive the message, so that it was out of order in approaching the target. Elements in three formations released their bombs in wrong sequence and smoke billowed up to hide targets from the other planes. As a result, only thirty-three planes in the first three formations and a few individual planes later were on target; some others dropped in areas inhabited by Chinese civilians. Even so, the military damage was great. The command's intelligence officers estimated that 40 to 50 per cent of the target area had been destroyed by 38 per cent of the weight of attack.44 General Chennault later said that the raid "destroyed Hankow as a major base."
Chennault's postwar comments, in fact, are worth quoting at greater length:
The December 18 attack of the Superforts was the first mass fire-bomb raid they attempted. LeMay was thoroughly impressed by the results of this weapon against an Asiatic city. When he moved on to command the entire B-29 attack on Japan from the Marianas, LeMay switched from high-altitude daylight attacks with high explosives to the devastating mass fire-bomb night raids that burned the guts out of Japan. . . 45
If the inference here is that the Hankow raid which Chennault had inspired and helped plan was the root of later XXI Bomber Command tactics, the passage does less than justice to the "Pentagon planners" for whom Chennault entertained small respect, or to the staff of XX Bomber Command. Long before the command's first mission the AAF had conducted studies and experiments on the effects of mass incendiary attacks on the inflammable cities of Japan. A small night incendiary raid against Nagaski had been staged in August and Washington had urged more, Both there and at Kharagpur there had been sentiment in favor of stripping the B-29's and using them exclusively for low-altitude fire bombing at night, the tactic which LeMay was later to use.* In September the COA had made further extensive studies on saturation incendiary attacks on six key Japanese cities, and in November both LeMay's staff and Arnold's had drawn up operational plans for such an attack on Nagasaki. PAC-AID and the early withdrawal from China negated these plans, but, in the context of these facts, Hankow can hardly be regarded as the ultimate source of LeMay's policy and tactics in March 1945.46
The diversion to Mukden on 7 December left LeMay with a maximum
【 在 shunderen 的大作中提到: 】
: 美军第一次大规模使用燃烧弹轰炸,之前使用传统炸弹效果不好,
: 而且成本太高。
: 燃烧弹对于中国,日本这类木头建筑居多的,杀伤力非常大,城市变成一片火海
: ...................
--
FROM 71.117.30.*