3,000 Miles to Hell and Back: The B-29 Superfortress Over Japan. Inside A The WWII Bomber
Video from the channel DroneScapes about Boeing B-29 Superfortress, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 39:55. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.
What it shows
The video reproduces The Last Bomb, a Technicolor film about the B-29 Superfortress offensive against Japan. It is preceded by about three minutes of recently produced channel introduction. The film follows a complete mission of the 21st Bomber Command. It begins in the war room on Guam, where General Curtis LeMay studies the weather report on Japan and decides to attack the Tokyo area at 12,000 feet below the clouds. He chooses target 574 because 573 is already three-quarters destroyed. We then see the preparation of the tactical plan, takeoffs from Guam, Tinian and Saipan, the flight over the ocean, the rendezvous with the escorting P-51 Mustangs, the bombing of two aircraft factories and an airfield, and the return.
When and where it was filmed
The footage corresponds to the 1945 campaign from the Marianas. In the narration the B-29s begin large-scale operations at the start of that year, and the film runs through to the atomic bombs of August. It was filmed at the bases on Guam, Tinian and Saipan, on Iwo Jima and in the air over Japan. Mount Fuji appears as a navigation landmark, along with the burned areas of Tokyo and the Chiba peninsula.
Context
The narration presents these missions as the longest and hardest of their time: some 1,500 miles each way, about 15 hours of flight, nearly 7,000 gallons of fuel and 11 crew per aircraft. The film details the support organization. Assembly-line maintenance cut engine changes from three days to under half a day. The air-sea rescue network combined ships, submarines, Dumbo flying boats and Super Dumbo B-29s. Iwo Jima served as a base for the 7th Fighter Command's escort fighters and as an emergency airstrip: according to the film, nearly 2,000 damaged or fuel-starved B-29s landed there in three months. It also shows Japanese fighter attacks, Mustang strafing runs on the way back, and a failed landing with a single survivor. It ends with the July raids and the dropping of two atomic bombs, which precipitated Japan's surrender.