Cigars & Bombs

Major General Curtis E. ("Ironpants") LeMay has lately become known as "The Cigar." He usually has one clenched in his teeth (it helps to cover a slight facial paralysis, the result of an old wound), and the boys of his 21st Bomber (B29) Command, in sincerest flattery, have also become cigar puffers. Last week their stogies stuck up at a cocky angle. Their morale and their operational results were soaring.

Bombing Japan from the Marianas, near their extreme round-trip range (3,600 miles), the Superfortresses now have a handy way station--Iwo Jima--on which to land when they are lamed in combat or too short of fuel to make it back to Guam, Saipan or Tinian. Fighter escort from Iwo has also helped to cut losses. Result: the Jap airfields on Kyushu have taken a persistent beating, and enemy fighter production has been cut 50%. In April, the B-295 unloaded 30,000 tons of bombs--as much as in the ten preceding months--but U.S. losses dropped to half the rate for the previous three months.

Billowing Fires. In the two biggest and most destructive attacks so far launched, The Cigar last week sent more than 900 B-29s against Japan. A first force of more than 400 set huge, billowing fires in the naval fueling station and synthetic fuel factory at Tokuyama, the big oil refinery at Otaki, and the oil storage installations on Oshima (biggest in the home islands). They also flogged four airfields on Kyushu and Shikoku. Fighter opposition was timid, but there was heavy flak from Jap warships. Nevertheless, not one of the big bombers was lost.

Next day, LeMay relaxed somewhat. sending a smaller force (100 to 150 B-29s) to bomb the Kawanishi aircraft plant near Kobe, biggest producer of Jap seaplanes.

That day again all the Superforts got back.

Then The Cigar wound up and really let the Japs have it. The war's greatest B-29 fleet -- "well over 500" Superforts --poured a searing load of 3,300 tons of fire bombs on Nagoya, third city of the Japanese Empire and home of the main Mitsubishi aircraft factories. Two bombers were lost.

Polluted Water. Last week General LeMay also disclosed a six-weeks-old cam paign to strangle Jap shipping by dense aerial mining of her coastal and inland waters. Nineteen missions had been flown ; the Navy had furnished the mines and mine experts. Parachuted into the water at night, the mines are the "magnetic" type; they sink to the bottom and explode when a ship passes close by. LeMay plans to keep the waters "polluted."

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