Target Tokyo!: With the 20th Air Force in World War II

Target Tokyo!, first published in 1955 as General Leemy's Circus, is the dramatic account of the human side of the air war in the Pacific and of the men who flew the 'Superforts,' the B-29 Superfortresses of General Curtis LeMay’s XXI Bomber Command, straight to the heart of Japan. Earl Snyder was a navigator on the B-29 Umbriago—Dat’s My Boy, and took part in the first B-29 raid on Tokyo. But, he recalls nervously, his crew didn’t drop their bombs on the Japanese capital, because at 29,000 feet the air was so cold that the bomb-release mechanism had frozen. Umbriago made it back to the base at Saipan with the fuel gauges registering “less than empty.” This is not a biography of General LeMay—or “General Leemy,” as the Japanese called him—it’s the story of the airmen who carried out his orders, flew the missions and lived or died without asking “too many questions.” Target Tokyo is a tribute to those men and, at the same time, an exciting record of their everyday lives. Writing with stark realism, Snyder hands the reader a share of the dangers and challenges, the devil-may-care, sometimes hilarious, adventures of the men as they struggle to survive, complete their missions, and eventually return safely home.