HOW DOES THE FIRBOMBING OF TOKYO'S POOREST NEIGHBORSHOOD WIN A WAR? 2/8: Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James M. Scott
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
1945 Tokyo
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Snow-Curtis-Firebombing-Atomic/dp/1324002999/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1X64JYW3Z1OT9&keywords=BLACK+SNOW+JAMES+SCOTT&qid=1674137497&s=books&sprefix=black+snow+james+scott%2Cstripbooks%2C61&sr=1-1
Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed.
Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.” James M. Scott reconstructs in granular detail that horrific night, and describes the development of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight “precision” bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing. Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first time commanders deliberately targeted civilians which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.
Drawing on first-person interviews with American pilots and bombardiers and Japanese survivors, air force archives, and oral histories never before published in English, Scott delivers a harrowing and gripping account, and his most important and compelling work to date.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone, it's me Tommy Init and Jack Manifold. |
| 0:02.5 | And we are here on the Shut Up I'm Talking podcast to let you know we just had the legendary Dan and Bill on our podcast. |
| 0:08.3 | YouTube OG's legendary status. |
| 0:10.8 | And they gave us so much advice and gave us so many interesting stories. |
| 0:15.5 | It's bloody brilliant, aren't it? |
| 0:16.5 | It was incredible. |
| 0:17.2 | So come check it out over on Shut Up I'm talking on all major streaming services. |
| 0:21.6 | Not audio stream, not like Netflix. Yeah. No, we're not quite there yet. |
| 0:25.7 | Maybe soon, but not now. No, probably not for them. All right. |
| 0:31.2 | John Dasher with James Scott, the author of the new book, Black Snow, Curtis LeMay, the fire Bombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb. |
| 0:39.3 | Haywood Hansel is in place. The 20th Air Force consists of two bomber commands, the 20th and the 21st. |
| 0:46.3 | They're launching Thanksgiving, 1944, and early December to Christmas, 1944, are the early launching of the B-29, strategic bombing, 25,000 feet, pressurized cabin. |
| 1:02.6 | James, the puzzle here is that you introduce that it doesn't work for a very simple thing. |
| 1:09.1 | Weather. How so, James. |
| 1:11.6 | Japan is a, you know, as an island nation out of the Pacific, it has notoriously cloudy, |
| 1:17.6 | rainy weather. And so some months, and of course, if you're doing daylight precision bombing, |
| 1:24.6 | you need to see in order to be able to put your bombs on target. And in Japan |
| 1:28.7 | in some months has as little as three days of clear weather. And the ability to predict those days |
| 1:34.4 | is a near impossibility. And so you've got this terrible weather for bombing. And then on top of that, |
| 1:41.2 | they discover that high up in the heavens ever Japan are these crazy violent jet streams where winds blow as much as 230 miles per hour. |
| 1:49.8 | I mean, those are like the winds that batter Mount Everest. |
| 1:52.4 | And of course, the bad weather and the jet streams just combined to completely wreck bomber accuracy. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.