One Hundred Years of Flight USAF Chronology ... - The Air University

1945
anas in June and July 1944 provided B–29 bases in the Pacific that
proved more useful in attacking the Japanese home islands.
January 20: Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay succeeded Brig. Gen. Haywood S.
Hansell, Jr., as commander of XXI Bomber Command in the Mariana
Islands, taking charge of the nation’s combat B–29s during a faltering
strategic air campaign against Japan.
January 28: U.S. ground forces (XIV Corps) retook Clark Field, the most
important air base in the Philippines, which had been in Japanese
hands since January 1942.
February 16: Army Air Forces C–47s dropped 2,065 paratroopers on the
Japanese-held island of Corregidor in Manila Bay in conjunction with
a U.S. amphibious landing on the island. The goal was to secure the
harbor of Manila, the most important city in the Philippines.
February 19: The Marine V Amphibious Corps landed on Iwo Jima, a Japanese
island between the Mariana Islands and Japan. Its capture eliminated
a major Japanese base, gave the United States an air base for
escorts of B–29 bombers, and furnished an emergency landing field
for B–29s on their way back from raids on Japan. Not until March 26
was the island secured.
February 22: Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces embarked on Operation
CLARION, launching air raids all over Germany to destroy transportation
targets such as railroad marshalling yards and bridges.
February 26: Lt. Gen. Millard F. Harmon, commanding general, Army Air
Forces, Pacific Ocean Areas, disappeared on a flight over the Pacific.
March 9–10: In a night air raid on Tokyo, more than 300 B–29 Superfortresses
from bases in the Marianas dropped incendiary bombs that
destroyed 16 square miles of the Japanese capital, about a fourth of
the city. In terms of lives lost, this air raid was the most destructive in
history. Undertaken by Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, commander of XXI
Bomber Command, the attack reflected a shift in U.S. bombardment
policy from high-altitude daylight attack on specific military targets to
low-level area bombing at night. Fourteen B–29s were lost to flak, but
none to interceptors.
March 18: Some 1,250 U.S. bombers escorted by 670 fighters dropped 3,000
tons of bombs on Berlin’s transportation and industrial areas. In terms
of numbers of bombers, this daylight attack was the largest of the war.
March 24: Eighth and Ninth Air Forces launched some 7,000 bombing,
transport, reconnaissance, interdiction, air support, and other sorties
in support of Operation VARSITY, the Allied crossing of the Rhine
River. More than 2,000 transports and gliders of IX Troop Carrier
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