Target Tokyo
In 1944, the U.S. deployed its new aviation wonder, the B-29 bomber. "We loved it," pilot Harry George would later recall. The seventy-ton Superfortress traveled farther and faster than previous bombers, and came equipped with remote-control guns and pressurized cabins.
The plane's ten-ton load capacity and almost 4,000-mile range made it suitable for long-distance bombing runs on Japan. B-29s were used in the March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, at a terrible cost to the Japanese population. And in August 1945, a specially-equipped B-29, the Enola Gay, would carry to Hiroshima the first of only two atomic weapons ever to be used in war.
Special Film Project 153, produced by the Army Air Forces in 1945 and narrated by Hollywood actor and future president Ronald Reagan, is better known as Target Tokyo. The film follows the bombers' first mission, from crew training in Nebraska to deployment on the Pacific island of Saipan -- secured as an air assault launching point -- and then to Japan and the new aircraft's first bombing raid.
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