An estimated 267,000 buildings burned to the ground. Sixty-three percent of Tokyo's commercial area, and 18 percent of its industry, was destroyed. Bomber crews coming in near the tail end of the raid reported smelling the stench of charred human flesh as they passed over the burning capital. Temperatures on the ground in Tokyo reached 1,800 degrees in some places. The combination of incendiaries, the way they were dropped, windy weather conditions and lack of coordinated firefighting on the ground resulted in a firestorm similar to what occurred two years previously in Hamburg, and only a month before in Dresden. Tokyo was hit over a three-hour period by three bomber streams that dropped roughly 2,000 tons of incendiaries near the docklands and in the industrial heart of the Japanese capital.

In fact, only 14 B-29s were lost in the March 9–10 Tokyo raid.Īs was done in Europe, pathfinder planes flying ahead of the bombers marked the target with a flaming X, guiding the attackers in. The attackers were helped by the fact that Japanese air defenses were almost nonexistent by that point in the war.

The B-29 bombers for the Tokyo raid were stripped of their defensive weapons and packed with various incendiary explosives, including white phosphorus and napalm, a new gasoline-based, fuel-gel mixture developed at Harvard University.Īs opposed to the high-altitude precision bombing, which the Allies practiced with only mixed success over both Germany and Japan, incendiary raids were carried out at low altitudes between 5,000 and 9,000 feet.

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