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

1945
Command dropped two Allied airborne divisions on the other side of
the Rhine near Wesel, Germany.
March 27–28: Almost 100 B–29 Superfortresses from bases in the Mariana
Islands dropped mines in the Shimonoseki Strait of Japan to stop
shipping between the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. This B–29 mining
operation was the first of many against Japan.
March 30: The Army Air Forces launched its final B–29 mission from India.
Twenty-six B–29s of XX Bomber Command raided Japanese facilities
on Bakum Island near Singapore.
April 7: Twentieth Air Force launched the first fighter-escorted B–29 raid on
Japan. Acquisition of the island of Iwo Jima, after heavy fighting in
February and March, made this raid possible by providing a base
within fighter range of Japan.
April 10: About 50 German jet aircraft shot down 10 U.S. bombers over the
Berlin area—the largest single-mission loss of bombers to enemy jets.
The same day, the bombers and their escorts shot down at least 20 of
the German jets.
April 25: Eighth Air Force flew its last mission against an industrial target,
launching 274 heavy bombers with escorts to bomb the Skoda Works
at Pilsen, Czechoslovakia.
May 1–7: In Operation CHOWHOUND, Eighth Air Force and Royal Air
Force bombers dropped 7,859 tons of food to starving people in the
Netherlands. By agreement with the Germans, the food was
dropped from low altitude on Dutch airfields, racetracks, golf
courses, and other high ground near towns and cities of the largely
flooded country.
May 8: World War II ended in Europe (V-E day).
May 16: In the largest use of napalm in the Pacific War, almost 100 Far East
Air Force P–38s attacked the Ipo Dam area of Luzon in the Philippines.
July 16: Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay assumed command of Twentieth Air
Force, which had been commanded directly by Army Air Forces commander
Gen. Henry H. Arnold.
July 16: The world’s first atomic bomb, having an explosive yield equal to 19
kilotons of TNT, successfully detonated at Trinity Site near Alamagordo,
New Mexico.
August 6: In the first atomic bomb attack in history, Col. Paul W. Tibbets
piloted a B–29 called Enola Gay from the island of Tinian in the Marianas
to Hiroshima, Japan, destroying the city with a single bomb.
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