This is John Bachelor. Also for my two-hour conversation with James Scott, his new book Black Snow, Curtis

LeMay, the Fire Bombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb. Curtis LeMay, starting in March of 1945, used the B29s to burn Japanese cities, to burn them one at

a time.

And here James explains how the atomic bomb, which is given much of the attention in

1945 ending the war or frightening the world, The atomic bomb was not as effective a weapon,

nor were there enough of them to be effective at that moment.

As the firebombing, listen to James explain how far Curtis LeMay had gone from March

until July and August of 1945.

Methodically, remember this is a man who believes in the mission,

taking care of his people, and getting it done.

No obstacle in his way. Curtis LeMay. Here's James Scott. And it's important

to remember we didn't actually have a working weapon until July 16, 1945 with a Trinity

test.

So up until that moment, the atomic bomb is a theory.

And so we get confirmation that morning

that the bomb works.

And then that changes that end-game calculus. by July 16th, LeMay is already burned. You know, all of Japan's major cities have been destroyed largely at that point. He's on to the secondary cities he's worked through and he's really getting ready to move into some of the he is

moving into tertiary cities. I mean cities that are populations of about 35,000 people.

So he's doing all this incredible heavy lifting with conventional flame weapons before the atomic bombs even tested.

More of this later tonight.