Tokyo (February 25, 1945)

We went to Tokyo again. There were 200 planes in this raid. While we were assembling two planes ran together. One blew up ant the other ditched near by. No one got out of either plane. The rest of the way to the target was very bad. We ran into a storm and got separated but got into a small formation for the bomb run. There were no fighters and little flack. Take off: 7:00, Bombs Away: 15:35, Land: 21:50.

— Joe Caner Swann

This was the first mission involving three bomb wings: the 73rd, the 313th, and the 314th. It was a large mission with 229 aircraft which were over the target between 3:00 and 5:00 pm. The bombers carried as much as 7,000 lbs. of bombs.

This mission was very successful in spite of the complete cloud cover with 172 aircraft hitting the primary target. Approximately 28,000,000 square feet (about 1 square mile) of urban area was destroyed. Enemy opposition was negligible.

Three aircraft were lost, two of these colliding over the assembly point.

Additional Resources

  • Read the complete journal kept by the Star Duster's right gunner, Joe Caner Swann.
  • Resume of 20th Air Force Missions, (see book information on the books resources page).
  • Mission resumes are also available on the Twentieth Air Force Association web site. This site is built with frames. To view the mission resumes click the "Missions" link in the top menu on the site's home page. This is mission 38.

Mission List

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License