Eighty years ago the US Air Force launches the most lethal air-raid of history

 

 

The US air force took full advantage of its newly conquered bases in the Marianas islands. 334 B-29s were despatched to bomb Tokyo carrying mainly incendiary bombs in the knowledge that the city's wood and paper housing was especially vulnerable. The resulting conflagration destroyed some 4,000 hectares of housing and killed rather fewer than 100,000. Perhaps 1.5m people lost their homes. It was the most lethal and destructive air raid of all time. Only 27 of the attacking aircraft were lost.

The Japanese launched a coup against the French authorities in Indochina to forestall any local assistance to an allied invasion of the country. The French colonial forces mounted localised resistance but all were overwhelmed with heavy casualties. Most of the survivors and other colonialists were imprisoned under harsh conditions, although some escaped into Thailand. A puppet empire in Vietnam and two puppet kingdoms, in Cambodia and Luang Prabang,  were established.

SS General Karl Wolff opened negotiations in Switzerland with Allen Dulles, the local head of US intelligence, which led ultimately to the surrender of the German garrison in Italy in May. Wolff's motivations are uncertain, but lives were saved and he escaped war crimes prosecution immediately after the war, although in 1964 he was convicted for his part in deporting Jews from Italy.

The US reached the River Rhine at Remagen and unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge, which the retreating Germans had been unable to destroy because of confusion over command structure and then a technical failure in their demolition charges. This success made up for the demolion of the Hohenzollern bridge at Cologne before the Americans captured the city, but the surrounding terrain did not make for easy exploitation and the existing plans for assault crossings, by the Anglo-Canadians in the North and by the Americans in the South, were pursued.