S8 Ep821: High-altitude precision bombing fails in Japan primarily due to notorious Pacific weather and violent jet streams with winds reaching 230 mph, which wreck bomber accuracy. The B-29, which cost $3.7 billion to develop—more than the atomic bomb—is a brand-n

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 3 May 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

High-altitude precision bombing fails in Japan primarily due to notorious Pacific weather and violent jet streams with winds reaching 230 mph, which wreck bomber accuracy. The B-29, which cost $3.7 billion to develop—more than the atomic bomb—is a brand-new, unrefined aircraft prone to frequent engine fires. Crews face grueling 3,000-mile roundtrip missions over a "dark forbidding ocean" with no place to land if they take damage. Early raids, such as those against the Nakajima aircraft factory, prove disappointing, destroying only 1% of the target while Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft guns in "Flack Alley" take a heavy toll on the bombers. This frustration leads to a growing debate about abandoning precision strikes for firebombing cities, a tactic the British already used in Germany. While top leadership initially favored strategic bombing, the massive investment in city-wrecking weapons like the atomic bomb suggests they are open to more radical, destructive changes. 2/8
1953

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0:31.2	I'm John Dascher with James Scott, the author of the new book Black Snow, Curtis LeMay, the fireb Bombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb.
0:39.8	Haywood Hansel is in place.
0:41.3	The 20th Air Force consists of two bomber commands, the 20th and the 21st.
0:46.7	They're launching Thanksgiving, 1944, and early December to Christmas, 1944, are the early launching of the B-29, strategic bombing,
0:59.0	25,000 feet, pressurized cabin. James, the puzzle here is that you introduce that it doesn't
1:07.0	work for a very simple thing. Weather. How so, James?
1:11.7	With Japan is a, you know, as an island nation out of the Pacific, it has notoriously cloudy, rainy weather.
1:19.0	And so some months, and of course, if you're doing daylight precision bombing, you need to see in order to be able to put your bombs on target.
1:28.3	And in Japan in some months has as little as three days of clear weather.
1:32.3	And the ability to predict those days is a near impossibility.
1:36.3	And so you've got this terrible weather for bombing.
1:40.3	And then on top of that, 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.
1:49.9	I mean, those are like the winds that batter Mount Everest.
1:52.6	And, of course, the bad weather and the jet streams just combine to completely wreck bomber accuracy.
1:59.8	And so those are two of the problems that Hansel faces.
2:02.4	Another one that he has is this B-29 is a brand-new plane.
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