Victor Davis Hanson (36:42)
One of the reasons they went to war, remember, is they had created a, what the French called a sanitary corridor around them. So they were occupying 60% of China. They were occupying what is now Taiwan. They were occupying all of the Pacific islands all the way up to Wake island, which they took. The only thing they didn't have was Midway, and they tried to get that. And then they had Korea and they had the Philippines and they had Singapore. So they controlled what is now the South China Sea and nobody could get there. So we started bombing in April of 1942, not very effectively occupied France and parts of Germany. The British had been doing it in earnest since 40 and wasn't very effective. But what I'm saying is the Germans were used to air raids. The only time the Japanese ever thought they had an air raid was In April of 1942 when the Hornet put, I think it was 16B25 Mitchell bombers, two engine medium bombers who should not be able to take off from an aircraft carrier. They couldn't land, but they took off on their Jimmy Doodle. And that shows shock. And they did almost no damage. But psychologically they did a lot of damage because that forced the Japanese navy to come out and challenge us at Midway. So they couldn't get that close again. What I'm getting at is Americans said if we ever get in a war with Japan, we need a long range bomber. The B17 is a wonderful bomber. 1936, 37. But it has a low capacity of 6 to 7, 8, depending on how you arm it. Low Flying Fortress, because it had machine guns. It was very well armed. But that was a lot of weight. It only carried about 7,000 pounds of bombs. 8. It had a good range. It depends on which model of B17, but maybe it could go in one direction a thousand miles. So the logic was always, someday we're going to get into France and we'll have bases. So the B17 and the B24 are okay, but what are we going to do about Japan? There's nothing near it. There's free China and India. That's a long way. So they, they put out a specification for a sophisticated superfortress and it would be able to fly 1700 miles in one way and it would be able to hold £20,000 and it would be able to fly 300 miles an hour with all that weight. And then they decided to put every theoretical thing possible into it. I think that was a mistake. They said we're going to have computers. So the central fire control gunner on the bubble, on the talk, he can push buttons and levers and he can see better than anybody. And if there's a plane coming down at 30 degrees below, he can take control of the eight or nine turrets and have them all point in one direction. It didn't work too well. But he was in a bubble. But the Japanese tried to shoot that guy who was my father. He flew, you know, 40 missions doing that. And then they had a pressurized cabinet. You know, how do you have pressurize a bomber when you open the bomb bay and you're at 30,000ft? So they created this tunnel and it was pressurized so you could have, you know, you didn't have to wear all that clump. You could have air mat, you know, oxygen mass, heavy jacket. That was new. And then they, they had the Pratt Whitney Double Wasp engine. That was a wonderful engine, 2200 horsepower. It was on the courser, the helicopter Hellcat and my favorite plane in World War II, the P47 Thunderbolt. But they, they wanted even more horsepower. So they came out with the right double cyclone multi cylinder, 18, 19 cylinders. It was a new engine and it wasn't for its size. It actually produced more horsepower per engine. I think it was 2400 maybe, but they didn't have fuel injection. And more importantly, to save weight on this plane because the engine was big and there's four of them. They made the crankcase out of magnesium, which is light but unfortunately can melt. And then it's air cooled. And these engines were huge. So what happened? And they didn't have time to test them, so they were putting people in Nebraska, in the States to test these things. And they would take off and enormous power and they would heat up. The back cylinders would heat up and they would melt down. And when they melted down, the magnesium caught fire like a bomb and took out the whole wing and crashed. So they had horrible ratio. It's a family secret. I don't want to get into it, but my father and his brother Victor, first cousin that was raised as a brother, joined the Marines and one of these two large Swedish boys hit somebody who he shouldn't have, an officer. And they drummed him out and they had to pick. And for some reason, my father was the one that they thought they were going to get rid of. So they said, you can either quit and we're going to go after you, or you can go to a new experimental program where you will die. Because they're all, we hear, they're all crashing and that's what you need to do. So he went and my grandfather said to me, well, you know, I thought Bill would be dead. That's what I was told, that they're all crashing. And Victor, they took Guadalcanal, they took Aya, Iwo Jima. They were going to walk over Okinawa, no problem. It was just the opposite. So they were all crashing because all of these things didn't work very well. 25,000 parts, all new, no test. They put them in China. There was no way to supply the gas and the bombs. They had to fly over Burma. Then they put them in India, nothing. And then when you loaded them up to go to, the idea was they were going to go at 30,000ft at 300 miles an hour. And the Zeros couldn't get up there, or the Cates or the Oscars, all these new variations of Japanese flak guns couldn't get up there. And they would go so fast over Japan. And then somebody said, wait a minute, you're designing an unproven test BOMBER that cost $3.5 billion, twice as much as the Manhattan atomic bomb. And you want these 11 guys to get in this unproven plane and you want them to fly 1600 miles one way over nothing but ocean, and then end up over Tokyo with about 20 minutes of fuel, and then hit the bombs when the, at that level, the jet stream is 300 miles an hour, and you want that to hit the target. And then you want them to get home when all of the planes are following them. And if one of those engines gets hot, it'll blow the plane up. They said yes. So they tried it. They tried it. They took the Marianas, Tiny, Guam, Saipan, in August 1944. They immediately got the Seabees in. They made these 7,000, 8,000 foot longer, put two strips on Guam, two on Tiny and one on Saipan. And the U.S. navy brought right to the shores, napalm. And all the supplies they needed. They were secure. There were no Japanese on the island, so that there was no way they could attack. They were kind of out of range of a lot of Japanese fighters. They had a fighter escort. I mean, they had fighters there to protect them. And they started flying and it didn't work. The planes were so heavily. They. They would fall off the cliff at 10, they didn't have enough power. And they would be. They would try to get up to 30,000ft and then one of the engines would heat. And they tried to do everything. They changed the flaps, they changed the intake system. They said every 50 hours or something we have to put new sleeves in. They did everything. Finally they got it, so it was okay. And then Curtis Omay came in and said, you know, General Haskell didn't work and we have $3 billion boondoggle. I'm going to take these boys and I'm going to take them in at 7,000ft. And the engines are not going to heat up because they're not going to climb that high. And they're going to go fast. They're going to get onto that jet stream. And everybody said, but it'll just knock the bombs off target. And he said, no, no, no, no, they don't have a target. It's called Napalm area bombing. We're going to have a guy come in with a Pathfinder, make a big X. It'll be all during the night. They won't even see you coming in. The barrels of the guns will be aimed high, they won't be aimed low. You're going to come in at 350 miles an hour in that jet stream and you're going to drop £20,000 each of incendiaries and that wooden city is going to go up in smoke and they are putting all of their components and displacing them. They make a. A Raiden engine or a Oscar engine and then the flaps and then the cockpit and then the wheels in different places. They had no industrial. You know, they bombed the Mishubishi. I know. I told my dad, I think it was 1985. I want to buy a. A Nissan Mishabishi, whatever had another name, Dotson. Dotson said, I want to buy a Dawson. No, no, no, no. I bomb that factory and I again, if you do that. So we lost a bunch of good boys Victor on that raid. We lost some great gate guys. One of them crashed right into the factory. I watched him do it. He told me that. So anyway, what I'm getting at is that changed everything. That was exactly the. The engines didn't heat up, the things went fast and they burned down. They split. Saved the historical city of Kyoto, never touched, but they. And they. They dropped over 11 million leaflets saying, get out. But you know, what did that mean? How are they going to get out? How are women and children going to go up mountains in. In March? So that won the war, basically. In the Pacific, they destroyed 85% of the industrial targets of the Auslama. Are going to keep going. He said, no, I'm out of napalm.