They Thought It Was Just Another Raid – Tokyo 1945 WW2 Revisit Japan

Описание: Tokyo in early 1945 was a city holding its breath. The war that had begun with such confidence and fervor three years earlier now pressed in from all sides. American forces had taken Saipan, placing the Japanese home islands within range of the new B-29 Superfortress bombers. Throughout the winter months, these silver giants had appeared in the skies over Tokyo, dropping their payloads from altitudes so high they seemed almost abstract, their destruction surgical and limited.
The citizens of Tokyo had grown accustomed to a rhythm of war. Air raid sirens would wail, families would gather their most precious belongings, and they would hurry to shelters or firebreaks. The raids were frightening, certainly, but survivable. The city's civil defense preparations seemed adequate. Fire brigades stood ready. Neighborhoods had organized bucket chains. Citizens had been trained to smother incendiary bombs with sand or wet blankets.
What they could not know, what no one could have anticipated, was that American war planners had been studying Tokyo's vulnerabilities with meticulous care. They had examined reconnaissance photographs, analyzed construction patterns, and calculated wind speeds. They had noted that Tokyo, like most Japanese cities, was built primarily of wood and paper—materials that had served Japanese architecture beautifully for centuries but which possessed one terrible characteristic in wartime: they burned exceptionally well.
In the first week of March 1945, these observations would transform into one of the most devastating nights in human history.

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