At a time when the Pentagon is finally waking up to the physical collapse of our armed forces, Texas has a unique opportunity to lead.
In March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sounded the alarm with <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4118161/rapid-force-wide-review-of-military-standards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a directive</a>: Military standards have dangerously eroded. “Our adversaries are not growing weaker,” he wrote. “Our tasks are not growing less challenging.”
He ordered a department-wide review of physical fitness, grooming, and readiness standards and <a href="https://x.com/SecDef/status/1907509325804798454" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recently stated</a>, “For too long, we’ve allowed standards to slip within the ranks for men and women serving in combat MOSs. This is unacceptable and over.”
He also welcomed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the Pentagon, pledging to ensure our warfighters are “healthy and fit to fight.” These moves reflect a growing recognition of the military’s readiness crisis — and that rebuilding a warrior culture requires action, not speeches.
Texas is answering that call.
The Texas Military Forces Health and Readiness Act (House Bill 4993) is a no-compromise legislative initiative to restore physical readiness, health, and resilience in the Texas Military Forces. It aligns with the Department of Defense’s renewed focus on standards and provides a battle-ready model that other states — and even the federal government — can adopt.
<h3>The Current Readiness Crisis And Systemic Failures</h3>
<div id="attachment_908487" style="width: 876px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-908487" class="size-large wp-image-908487" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2133324574-866x576.jpg" alt="EL PASO, TEXAS - APRIL 02: Texas National Guard soldiers transport border fencing layered with concertina wire near the Rio Grande river on April 02, 2024 in El Paso, Texas. Last week, hundreds of migrants seeking asylum clashed with Texas national guardsmen while waiting to turn themselves in to border patrol agents for processing. Texas continues awaiting a verdict on Senate Bill 4. Attorneys representing the state of Texas are scheduled to return to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on April 3 to continue arguing for the constitutional basis of the bill. Senate Bill 4 allows state law enforcement officials to detain and arrest undocumented immigrants suspected of illegally crossing into the United States. Thus far, all prior attempts to put the Bill into effect have been blocked by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)" width="866" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2133324574-866x576.jpg 866w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2133324574-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2133324574-768x511.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2133324574.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 866px) 100vw, 866px" />Brandon Bell/Getty Images</div>
The National Guard plays an increasingly vital dual role: it must respond to domestic crises and be ready to “fight tonight” in peer-level combat operations. Hegseth has emphasized the need to “match threats to capabilities.” But for states like Texas — where the Guard is expected to conduct disaster operations, support border security, and remain deployable worldwide — this mission cannot be met under current conditions.
This isn’t just about pushups. America’s military readiness crisis is real, and it’s gutting our combat capability across the force. Military readiness isn’t a slogan — it’s the bedrock of deterrence and victory. Yet today, 68% of U.S. service members are overweight or obese, according to a 2023 report by the American Security Project. Fitness-related health costs and lost duty time exceed $1.35 billion annually, directly sabotaging operational effectiveness. That’s bad enough for active-duty forces — but for the National Guard, the situation is catastrophic.
If active-duty service members with full access to resources are struggling, the situation for part-time National Guard forces is even more dire. In Texas, part-time Guardsmen train a fraction of the time compared to Active Duty. They are spread across vast distances, often without access to adequate training facilities, wellness programs, or basic fitness infrastructure. Unlike the Active Duty, the Guard operates with persistent disparities in funding, support services, and oversight. Wellness programs go underutilized, accountability is virtually nonexistent, and time for physical training is painfully limited. The result? A force on the edge of collapse — unfit, underprepared, and unable to meet the demands of today’s missions. This isn’t just a training problem. It’s a strategic liability.
<h3>The Army’s Food Scandal: A Symptom Of The Larger Collapse</h3>
Adding insult to injury is the military’s broken nutrition system. A January 2025 Military.com <a href="https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-features/2025/02/14/over-151-million-taken-soldiers-paychecks-food-costs-spent-elsewhere-army.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">investigation</a> found that the Army diverted over $151 million in food allowance payments from junior enlisted soldiers, with only 30% of those funds actually going toward meals. At Fort Cavazos in Texas, only $11.7 million of $42.5 million collected went to feed troops. Other bases relied on vending machines stocked with sugary snacks, or served meals of toast and lima beans — or no meals at all.
This isn’t just a logistical failure. It’s a betrayal of the trust and conditions necessary for building a capable, professional fighting force. For the National Guard, already starved of resources and time, this neglect is lethal. This is not a military prepared to win wars — it’s a hollow shell.
<div id="attachment_908491" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-908491" class="size-large wp-image-908491" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1928669611-864x576.jpg" alt="EAGLE PASS, TEXAS - JANUARY 12: National Guard soldiers stand guard on the banks of the Rio Grande river at Shelby Park on January 12, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. The Texas National Guard continues its blockade and surveillance of Shelby Park in an effort to deter illegal immigration. The Department of Justice has accused the Texas National Guard of blocking Border Patrol agents from carrying out their duties along the river. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1928669611-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1928669611-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1928669611-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1928669611.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Brandon Bell/Getty Images</div>
<h3>HB 4993: A Texas-Size Fix</h3>
HB <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB04993I.htm">4993</a> is a Texas-sized solution to this national crisis. It creates a comprehensive, accountable system to rebuild readiness:
<ul>
<li>Statewide Fitness Access: State-funded gym memberships and access to certified civilian trainers ensure Guardsmen across Texas can train consistently, regardless of location.</li>
<li>Integrated Digital Platform: Service members get real-time fitness tracking, customized plans, injury prevention, and mental health tools in a secure app.</li>
<li>Comprehensive Wellness Services: The bill funds rehabilitation, nutrition counseling, mental health support, and family-based fitness programs, because force readiness starts at home.</li>
<li>Performance-Based Culture: Structured incentives, advancement pathways, and public recognition will restore the warrior ethos and reward excellence.</li>
<li>Transparency and Accountability: Quarterly reports to the Legislature, corrective action plans, and unit-level oversight. If readiness falters, the system adapts — now, not later.</li>
<li>Minimal Cost, Maximum Return: This initiative delivers a high-impact return at a fraction of the $1.35 billion national fitness-related losses. This is a high-impact, low-cost readiness reform that delivers immediate and lasting results — saving lives, taxpayer dollars, and national security. </li>
</ul>
<h3>Reinforcing National Readiness Priorities</h3>
For too long, the physical and mental health of our service members has been allowed to rot — not because of funding shortages, but because of cowardice, complacency, and a lack of standards. HB 4993 rejects that failure. It embodies the resolve to act decisively and reforge a professional force worthy of the missions it’s expected to carry out.
This is the moment for Texas to lead. HB 4993 supports the national call to “Make America Healthy Again” and hands other states a clear, scalable playbook. The health, fitness, and discipline of our military are not internal HR concerns — they are national security imperatives.
Readiness isn’t negotiable. It’s the prerequisite for effective deterrence, mission success, and survival in a world of growing threats. Texas is doing its part. Now the Texas Legislature must rise to the occasion — and show the nation what readiness, resolve, and responsibility really look like.
* * *
Ammon Blair is a Senior Fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s ‘Secure &amp; Sovereign Texas’ Initiative.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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The United States Navy is reportedly planning to send a second destroyer to patrol the waters around the southern border as part of President Donald Trump&#8217;s historic crackdown on illegal immigration and drugs.
U.S. Northern Command deployed the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely to the Gulf of America on March 15, 2025, to work with the U.S. Coast Guard in drug interdiction missions.
A <a href="https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/03/19/navy-plans-deploy-second-destroyer-patrol-waters-off-us-and-mexico-week.html">report</a> from Military.com on Wednesday said that the Navy was deploying a second destroyer to the region to further bolster efforts to secure the border.
The U.S. Coast Guard seemingly confirmed the news this week when it issued a statement that said U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) has &#8220;deployed two U.S. Navy warships to the southern border to support Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Coast Guard operations.&#8221;
&#8220;These U.S. Navy warships will operate in direct support of the Coast Guard and carry Coast Guard law enforcement teams that will enable them to shift to Coast Guard control during interdiction operations,&#8221; the <a href="https://www.news.uscg.mil/Press-Releases/Article/4124185/coast-guard-achieves-major-milestone-in-drug-interdiction-border-control-operat/">statement</a> read. &#8220;As the Coast Guard hardens and sustains its operational posture, including the arrival of these U.S. Navy warships, it is fully integrated with DHS and the Department of Defense (DoD) through NORTHCOM and U.S. Southern Command.&#8221;
The arrival of destroyers to the region is a significant development in America&#8217;s fight against Mexican drug cartels as destroyers have significantly greater capabilities, are larger, and carry a more extensive and far more lethal array of weapons than cutter ships that the Coast Guard uses.
The news comes as the administration has already deployed more than 10,000 active-duty soldiers to help secure the southern border, which led to the U.S. experiencing the lowest number of border apprehensions of illegal border crossers in recorded history during Trump&#8217;s first full month in office.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pentagon-considers-buffer-zone-on-border-to-boost-illegal-immigration-crack-down">Pentagon Considers Buffer Zone On Border To Boost Illegal Immigration Crack Down</a>

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The big news from the weekend is that President Trump announced attacks by the United States military on the Houthis, a group of America-hating, Jew-hating, anti-Israel, anti-American, near-Satanic terrorists in Yemen, who have been at war with the Saudi government for a very long time.
The Biden administration pushed the Saudis to give up their war with the Houthis on “humanitarian grounds.”
After October 7, 2023, the result was that the Houthis decided to target Israel with missile strikes and to target shipping in the Red Sea, a major artery for international shipping and trade. The Houthis are almost entirely funded and staffed by the Iranian military, which has propped up the Houthis for years.
How much has international shipping been affected by the Houthi attacks? Global consumer goods inflation increased by approximately 0.6% to 0.7% in 2024 alone, due to higher shipping rates caused by Houthi attacks.
That is a significant amount. The current inflation rate in the United States is hovering around 2.8% to 3%. Imagine subtracting 0.6% or 0.7% from that. That amount would be much closer to normalcy.
A huge chunk of the hike in inflation could theoretically be attributed to the attacks that the Houthis are launching on international shipping.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2159-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
The average cost for shipping a 40-foot container has risen to around $3,000, up from less than $1,500 before the attacks. Why? Because shipments that used to take the shortcut through the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea are now forced to go all the way around the Horn of Africa, which takes much longer and is much more costly.
Additional fuel costs for rerouting ships around Africa are roughly $1 million more per voyage. About 90% of ships are now avoiding the Red Sea route due to those Houthi attacks. Container shipping through the Red Sea has declined by approximately 90%. The number of merchant ships passing through the Red Sea annually has dropped from 25,000 to 10,000. Such rerouting adds an average of 10 to 14 days to voyage time.
For those wondering why receiving packages takes longer than it did just a few years ago, that would be one reason. Seventy-five percent of all United-States- and United-Kingdom-affiliated vessels and 60% of European-Union-affiliated vessels are now rerouting around Africa instead of transiting the Red Sea. At least 30 ships have been damaged by Houthi attacks. Normally, the Suez Canal handles about 12% of all global trade. That&#8217;s $1 trillion of goods per year, and that number is shrinking to close to zero because of the Houthi attacks.
Yes, it&#8217;s about time we went after them.
So, President Trump announced over the weekend that the United States military was targeting the Houthis. He <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114167864888304754" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stated</a>: 
<blockquote>The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated. We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective. The Houthis have choked off shipping in one of the most important Waterways of the World, grinding vast swaths of Global Commerce to a halt, and attacking the core principle of Freedom of Navigation upon which International Trade and Commerce depends. 
Our brave Warfighters are right now carrying out aerial attacks on the terrorists’ bases, leaders, and missile defenses to protect American shipping, air, and naval assets, and to restore Navigational Freedom. No terrorist force will stop American commercial and naval vessels from freely sailing the Waterways of the World.
To all Houthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!</blockquote>
This is what I signed up for — because it turns out that freedom of the seas is unbelievably important. And the United States, as the global hegemon, is the guarantor of the freedom of the seas.
Launching attacks on pirates is a United States tradition that dates back to Thomas Jefferson fighting the Barbary pirates who were attacking American shipping.
What President Trump is doing is an excellent use of the United States military.
This is the “peace through strength” model that President Trump has always applied. Guaranteeing freedom of the seas is also a very good international signal. The Chinese government has been exploring farther away from land masses it controls into waterways in the South China Sea, which is a massive shipping artery as well, holding up boating and shipping from places like the Philippines.
Thus, this attack on the Houthis is a very powerful signal (to countries such as China) that the United States is not going to allow the shutdown of international waterways.
The White House shared some pictures of President Trump overseeing the strikes on the Houthis. I love it. President Trump came in from his game of golf wearing his MAGA hat with headphones on.
I love the casual nature of President Trump coming off the golf course so he could watch what was happening. I think that&#8217;s wonderful, because it&#8217;s with that level of casualness that we should treat America&#8217;s enemies.
If you screw with us, we will stomp you into the ground. We should smash you like a giant boot on a worm.

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By 2:30 a.m. on March 10, 1945, the bombers had all disappeared over the glowing horizon and the “all clear” sounded across a shattered Tokyo. 
While back on Guam, Gen. LeMay and his staffers were breathing a collective sigh of relief, over a million suddenly homeless Japanese wandered the smoldering lunar landscape of their devastated capital city like bewildered phantasms. When the smokey dawn arrived, the grey, muted sunlight revealed badly burned survivors stumbling into what medical centers remained while others returned to ash heaps that were once their neighborhoods searching for family members separated from them in the chaos of the night before. Ishikawa Iwao came upon the charred remains of his wife and two girls. One young girl would recall having to push her way through the dead bodies with her feet. In the Tokyo subway, thousands of naked and seared humanoid figures were piled into the narrow confines. If it was not hell itself, LeMay’s bombers had come as close as the human race could to replicating it on this earth.
Although there were attempts soon after the raid to arrive at a reliable casualty figure, it was guesswork. Many of the Tokyo officials who would have tallied the corpses and presented a body count to the emperor, whose palace had been spared, were either dead, injured, searching for loved ones, or scrounging for food. Various historians, as well as subsequent Japanese and U.S. records, put the death toll at anywhere from 87,000 to over 110,000 with another 40,000 injured. Respected researchers like Edwin Hoyt, however, argued that even the high estimates of fatalities are a gross undercount given the population of the area that was scorched, and that these figures only represent actual counted dead along with approximations based on fragments of clothing, bones, jewelry, and the like. He would actually put the number at over 200,000. We will never know for sure. But what we do know is that, with the possible exception of Hiroshima, the March 9-10, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo was the most lethal single act of war in human history, and certainly tops anything conventional weapons had ever achieved before or since.
<div id="attachment_888437" style="width: 971px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888437" class="size-large wp-image-888437" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031-961x576.jpg" alt="Tokyo residents who lost their homes as a result of the U.S. bombings. 10th March 1945. The Operation Meetinghouse air raid of 9-10 March 1945 was later estimated to be the single most destructive bombing raid in history. It was part of a series of firebombing raids, conducted by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Photo: Kouyou Ishikawa, officer of the Metropolitan Police Department. Tokyo, Japan. (Photo By Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)" width="961" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031-961x576.jpg 961w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031-300x180.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031-768x461.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 961px) 100vw, 961px" />Tokyo residents who lost their homes as a result of the U.S. bombings. 10th March 1945. Photo: Kouyou Ishikawa, officer of the Metropolitan Police Department. Tokyo, Japan. (Photo By Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)</div>
Despite the mass killing they’d just unleashed, LeMay and his bomber crews were ebullient. Losses hadn’t been 70% as some predicted but rather just 4%: 14 bombers and 96 crewmen lost. This in exchange for reducing over 16 square miles of the enemy’s capital city to ash. The Superfortresses incinerated 63% of the commercial district, wiped out 18% of Tokyo’s industry, and burned to the ground roughly a quarter million buildings and homes, which was 25% of the city.
Flying at low altitude, it turned out, was less taxing on the B-29’s temperamental engines as well as more fuel-efficient. So low-level nighttime fire bombings would be LeMay’s template going forward. In effect, America’s strategy for winning the war was to simply dump burning gasoline over Japan until they finally came to their senses. In fact, over the next six months the B-29s would proceed to burn out one Japanese city after another, including several return trips to embattled Tokyo, effectively hammering a nation already teetering due to critical shortages to its knees. In fact, LeMay was confident that by putting every Japanese city to the torch, his B-29s could compel Japan to surrender without ever having to invade, or drop an atomic bomb. And, as <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flyboys-Story-Courage-James-Bradley/dp/0316105848/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">post-war surveys</a> revealed, of all the reasons Japanese civilians believed their nation had no choice but to end the war, the air raids topped the list.
And no wonder. As historian and author James Bradley writes: “Curtis [LeMay] was clearly much more effective than the American bombers had been in Europe. Bombing destroyed seventy-nine square miles of Germany’s urban area. Curtis destroyed more than twice as much urban area in Japan. 178 square miles…In fact, the damage in just two Japanese cities, Tokyo (56.3 square miles) and Osaka (16.4 square miles) nearly equaled all the damage done to all German cities put together.” And these were just two of nearly 70 cities the B-29s burned out between March and August 1945.
<div id="attachment_888441" style="width: 727px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888441" class="size-large wp-image-888441" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154-717x576.jpg" alt="Aerial view of Tokyo razed by American bombing carried out on the evening of March 9th by 334 B-29 Super Flying Fortresses. Tokyo, March 1945 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)" width="717" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154-717x576.jpg 717w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154-300x241.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154-768x617.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 717px) 100vw, 717px" />Aerial view of Tokyo razed by American bombing carried out on the evening of March 9th by 334 B-29 Super Flying Fortresses. Tokyo, March 1945 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)</div>
Indeed, even after the atomic bombs vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing continued; the last Japanese city to be put to the torch was Akita, on August 14, 1945, five days after Nagasaki and just hours before Japan announced its capitulation.
The morality of firebombing or “area bombing” has been a subject of intense debate ever since. Certainly in the modern age where nations like Israel are castigated in the court of global opinion for “disproportionate” responses to acts of war, one is hard-pressed to find proportionality in a bombing campaign that, in ostensible retaliation for 2,400 dead at Pearl Harbor, eventually burned to death over a half million old men, women, and children and rendered over eight million homeless.
To be sure, some in the military did question the ethics of such indiscriminate killing. Brig. Gen. Charles Bonner Feller condemned the Tokyo raid as “one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all of history.” LeMay himself candidly <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-Wars-Global-Conflict/dp/0465066984" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conceded</a>, “I suppose if we’d lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminals.”
But when it comes to the bombing of Japan especially, there are two factors to consider before handing down judgement ex post facto. First, 34% of Japanese industrial workers were jammed into her six largest cities. And many of those who did not work on the factory floor were directly involved in contributing to the war effort through the cottage industry of making parts for nearby factories in their home workshops. As one 1944 report to the White House argued, “each factory was like a tree radiating a web of roots throughout the surrounding living areas from which it drew both workers and parts.” In other words, an argument could be made that every Japanese dwelling was a legitimate military target. And thusly, “de-housing”, to use Churchill’s antiseptic phrase, was considered to be justified.
Feller’s rare dissent aside, we are speaking of what the Germans called “terror bombing” and the Japanese “slaughter bombing” with the advantage of decades of hindsight and reflection. Today we know that by March 1945 the war was barely six months away from concluding. But U.S. planners back then certainly could not know this. As far as they were concerned the ferocious battles of Peleliu, Manila, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa amply demonstrated that, if anything, Japanese resistance was stiffening, and growing ever more fanatical. In 1945, Germany may have been on the ropes, but Japan was showing no hint of surrender. The trusted journalist Ernie Pyle wrote, “The closer we get to Japan, the harder it will be. To me it looks like trying days for us in the years ahead.” As Bradley points out, Pyle said years, not months.
It was with this backdrop of frustration with an enemy who, though clearly beaten, still refused to give up, combined with the brutality of the Japanese themselves — especially their sadistic conduct towards civilians and POWs that was well-known by then — that erased any moral qualms from the nation’s collective conscience. The growing consensus both inside the War Department as well as Main Street, USA, was that this madness had to end. And if it took burning all of Japan back into the stone age to stop our boys from coming home in coffins or maimed and mutilated, then so be it. Who are we, basking in the eighth decade of the hard-won Pax Americana, to judge those who saw nothing but a human catastrophe looming before them? As the war inexorably moved towards what would have been its inevitable gory climax, all that lay ahead was an invasion of the home islands with literally millions of Allied, and most likely tens of millions of Japanese, casualties to pay the price.
As for the men who carried out the burning of Tokyo that night, once the euphoria of surviving a mission so many expected to be their last wore off, they no doubt pondered the ethics of dumping napalm on defenseless people below. But training, discipline, and war-weariness had instilled in most of them a sense of clinical detachment. They just wanted to get in, execute the mission, and get out of there in one piece. As LeMay would offer unapologetically, “Every soldier thinks about the moral aspect of what he is doing. But all war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.”
On August 6, 1945, the uranium bomb “Little Boy” destroyed Hiroshima. Three days later the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” obliterated Nagasaki. But Japan’s most stalwart militarists, who were more than prepared to sacrifice their entire population to thwart an Allied invasion, viewed atomic weapons as more of a gradual rather than quantum leap in escalation. After all, as with the M69, the atomic bombs killed most of their victims with fire.
Russia’s invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria on August 8, 1945, certainly removed another piece of their wobbly Jenga tower. One and a half million Red Army troops attacked the emperor’s three quarter of a million warriors in the Chinese province and, along with vengeful Manchus, engaged in the mass killing, looting, and rape of thousands of Japanese “pioneers,” and sent 700,000 captives to Stalin’s gulags.
Even the intrepid U.S. submariners effectively sinking the Japanese Merchant Marine did not alone end Japan’s war effort. Dai Nippon’s commanders still ate well, drank good sake, and ravished enslaved “comfort women” while their starving people subsisted on grasshoppers and sawdust cakes.
Morality aside, a strong case can be made that, of all the factors that led to Japan’s ultimate surrender, it was the firebombing that weighed most heavily in Hirohito’s decision to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/07/obituaries/a-leader-who-took-japan-to-war-to-surrender-and-finally-to-peace.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">compel his nation</a> to “bear the unbearable, and “endure the unendurable.” In fact, it is quite conceivable to imagine eventual U.S. victory over Japan through “slaughter bombing” alone. In a meeting with Gen. Arnold, LeMay informed him that by September 1945 there would be no more Japanese targets left to bomb. “And with the targets gone we couldn’t see much of any war going on.” According to Prince Fumimaro Konoe, “…the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29.” It makes one wonder if Hiroshima and Nagasaki ever needed to occur. Although others would argue that the atom bombs were, in fact, the essential wake-up call demonstrations of the awesome power arrayed against Japan. In a post-war interview, Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro stated, “The atom bomb didn’t end the war, but it prompted the emperor to make a decision.” The debate continues.
<div id="attachment_888479" style="width: 790px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888479" class="size-large wp-image-888479" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1-780x576.jpg" alt="2nd September 1945: Japanese Imperial Headquarters representative General Yoshijiro Umezu (foreground, right) signing Japanese Instrument of Surrender while General MacArthur (foreground, centre) watches, aboard the USS Missouri, Tokyo Bay. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="780" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1-780x576.jpg 780w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1-300x221.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1-768x567.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" />Hulton Archive/Getty Images</div>
Again, these are questions revisited today through the clear lens of decades of hindsight. At the time, the U.S. government, seeing no end in sight, had a solemn obligation to the American people to do whatever was necessary to end the costliest war in human history. Still, no matter what ultimately prompted Japan’s leaders to accept defeat, the countdown to that defeat began on a terrible March night over Tokyo, eighty years ago, when the B-29s came in force, and the night sky rained fire. And the hellfire of total war finally came home to Japan.
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-1?row=0&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+1&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 1</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-2?row=0&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+2&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 2</a>

Aerial View Of Tokyo After The Bombing

Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 3

If God ever decided to create a city that would be most vulnerable to a mass napalm attack, He would construct 1945 Tokyo. Estimates vary, but at that stage of the war the city’s population was roughly 6.5 million inhabitants, as opposed to around 3.5 million Berliners. Although the two Axis capitals had roughly the same overall average population density of between 8,000 to 10,000 per square mile, certain areas in Tokyo like the Asakusa workers district crammed 130,000 people into the same space. And, unlike Berlin, many of Tokyo’s houses, shops, and other structures were built of wood and featured paper walls. To make matters worse, even though Japan’s leaders understood the ominous threat posed by the now-in-range B-29s to the home islands due to the loss of the Marianas, they prioritized production over protecting their citizenry.
As such, there were only 18 concrete air raid shelters in all of Tokyo, capable of only shielding approximately 5,000 of the city’s 6.5 million inhabitants. The rest made do with shallow backyard dugouts and other makeshift shelters. In the entire city a mere 8,000 firefighters along with citizens practiced in forming bucket brigades were all that stood between them and $200 million-worth of a mighty industrial power’s most advanced war machines coming in low to dump over three million pounds of flaming gel onto their city. And as if Tokyo wasn’t exposed enough, the night of March 9-10, 1945, was cold with howling winds gusting at up to 50 mph, creating an ideal environment for fanning the flames. 
In short, the stage was set for what would be the single most lethal day in the history of conventional warfare.
<div id="attachment_888383" style="width: 697px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888383" class="wp-image-888383 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1-687x576.jpg" alt="IN FLIGHT - JANUARY 02: The Bomber Boeing B-29 Superfortress On Assignment Between 1943 And 1945. Put Into Service In 1943, It Was Used By Great Britain And The Usa. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)" width="687" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1-687x576.jpg 687w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1-300x251.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1-768x644.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 687px) 100vw, 687px" />Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</div>
A little after midnight, just as Radio Tokyo was signing off and the air-raid sirens began to whine, the first group of pathfinder B-29s roared over the city. Flying in at right angles to each other, their mission was to paint a flaming “X” on the target area with incendiaries. Once the pathfinders did their work, the rest of the bombers appeared overhead in groups of three and began dropping their payloads onto their assigned quadrants. Residents would later recall how, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flyboys-Story-Courage-James-Bradley/dp/0316105848/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in the words</a> of Hashimoto Yoshiko, the bombers did not appear as they usually did as “dots in the sky with a tail.” This night was different. “They were flying so low,” she said, “I wondered if they would hit the utility poles…They were so big.”
The B-29 had a device called an intervalometer, which dropped a bundled cluster of M69s each weighing 500 pounds every 50 feet; the timing was such as to cover an area roughly 350 by 2,000 feet. Once they dropped to an altitude of 2,000, the clusters burst and showered the area with the incendiary pipe bombs; they floated to the ground like a “silver waterfall” as many observers <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flyboys-Story-Courage-James-Bradley/dp/0316105848/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">commonly described</a> the scene. A German priest watching from the Jesuit Sophia University perched on a hill overlooking the city remarked that it reminded him of “the silver tinsel we hung from Christmas trees in Germany…and where these silver streamers would touch the ground, a fire would erupt.”
With each detonation, a fountain of burning goo would shoot out in all directions and devour everything it touched. The high winds at ground level whipped the flames sending them spreading out rather than up. And when the fires merged, the wind gusts fanned the conflagration into a raging firestorm racing through the narrow streets, incinerating thousands of Japanese who realized too late their shallow dugouts were no protection from this rapidly advancing cataclysm consuming their city.
Within fifteen minutes of the first fires, Tokyo’s firefighters were completely overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and violence of the spreading inferno, with one <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/hellfire-earth-operation-meetinghouse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declaring</a> “Hellfire is upon us!” Many would die in heroic, if futile, attempts to contain the conflagration that resulted from 8,519 clusters of M69s weighing 500 pounds, each bursting over their city and cascading down on them like a flaming deluge. One pilot recalled seeing burned out corpses of firefighters huddled around their engine that had melted like wax.
Succeeding waves of fliers had no problem spotting their targets. The flames were so bright, said one pilot, “the whole area was lighted as if it was broad daylight when we entered the drop zone.” Martin Sheridan, a correspondent for The Boston Globe, hitched a ride with the B-29 Patches, which was farther back in the bomber stream. He would write: “The navigator didn’t have to give the pilot bearings towards Tokyo because 40 miles from the blacked-out city we could see the reddish glow of the burning capital on the horizon.” Once over the target, Sheridan would report, “The area below me was a sea of flame.”
<div id="attachment_888493" style="width: 478px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888493" class="wp-image-888493 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/image-1-468x576.png" alt="Credit: S. Smisek. Colorized image from a B-29." width="468" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/image-1-468x576.png 468w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/image-1-244x300.png 244w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/image-1.png 720w" sizes="(max-width: 468px) 100vw, 468px" />Credit: S. Smisek. Colorized image from a B-29.</div>
The fires were so strong they sent updrafts whooshing thousands of feet into the air, tossing the giant Superfortresses through the demonic orange sky like leaves in the wind. Several bombers were flipped over on their backs; crewmen not firmly buckled in their seats went tumbling wildly through their fuselages. Although the updrafts posed a very real danger and pushed pilots’ skills to the limit, enemy action was barely a factor. Anti-aircraft gunners, confused by the darkness and unexpected low altitudes, tried to put their spotlights on bombers above them while frantically adjusting their barrels to intercept the speeding machines but with little success. The B-29 crews reported back to LeMay: “Bombing the target visually. Flak moderate. Fighter opposition: nil.”
LeMay’s gamble had paid off. It turned out the enemy had plenty of small caliber guns that could reach up to 5,000 feet, and heavier flak cannons ranging between 10,000 and 30,000, but the window through which the general sent over 300 of his nation’s most expensive hardware and thousands of highly trained crewmen was wide open. After all, who would be mad enough to fly bombers in at that altitude? Although his commander would wait for follow-up reconnaissance photos the next day to assess the damage, one staffer on Guam that night remembered the taciturn LeMay chomping his cigar and saying, “It looks pretty good.” He even managed a hint of a smile.
<div id="attachment_888413" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888413" class="size-large wp-image-888413" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power-864x576.jpg" alt="From left: General Lauris Norstad, Twentieth Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command commander, General Thomas S. Power, 314th Bomb Wing commander. The three senior USAAF officers review reports from the Tokyo raid of March 9-10, 1945. U.S. Government (National Archives), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power.jpg 960w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />National Archives. Public domain.</div>
No one caught in the fiery cauldron below, however, was smiling. Fueled by the ferocious winter winds, the firestorm ripped through the city like a red hot cyclone. <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/08/japan/society/tokyo-fire-bombing-anniversary/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20left%20my%20house%20(in,night%20of%20March%209%2C%201945." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Recalled</a> Matsumoto Yoshio, just fifteen at the time, “I left my house (in Chuo district) and looked east. All of Sumida district and Koto district was engulfed in red.” Survivors would remember seeing people stumbling through the streets while fiery tentacles flailed at them, setting them ablaze. Teenager Ono Kimei was running for her life through the conflagration when she saw a fleeing mother carrying her small child ahead of her. “Suddenly the firestorm swept out a finger to lick them, and in a second the mother and child burst into flames…Their clothes afire, they staggered and fell to the ground.”
The inferno soon spread well beyond LeMay’s chosen target area. The firestorm not only created hurricane-force winds of flames, but the intense heat reached an astounding 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas, blowing liquified glass into the air which then rained down on people like a searing hot shower. Even those who managed to escape incineration by direct exposure to the fires cried out in agony as the intense heat alone was enough to burn their clothes off their bodies. Thousands more suffocated as the firestorm greedily devoured any oxygen.
In desperation to escape the hellfire, panicked mobs of Tokyo residents stampeded towards any water they could find, such as the massive swimming pool inside the Futaba School. But the pool water offered no protection this night in which superheated vapors rushing ahead of the tsunami of flames cooked the air up to the same temperature as a blast furnace. The next morning over a thousand pink and scorched bodies were found crammed within; it was bone dry as all the water had boiled away. Others raced for the Sumida River whose Kototoi Bridge was a bonfire as the metal trestles had long been removed to be melted into munitions and replaced with now flaming wooden beams. A bundle of M69s burst right over the crowded span, effectively cooking anyone who didn’t jump into the water. “People were burning to death on the bridge,” recalled Hashimoto. “Clothes would burst into flames. My hair caught fire. Everyone was screaming.”
<div id="attachment_888423" style="width: 932px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888423" class="size-large wp-image-888423" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old-922x576.jpg" alt="Kototoi Bridge. Public Domain. " width="922" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old-922x576.jpg 922w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old-300x188.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old-768x480.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px" />Kototoi Bridge. Public Domain.</div>
When dropping bombs from up in the stratosphere, airmen are somewhat shielded by what psychologists call “the morality of altitude” wherein they are presented not with fellow human beings way down there on the ground, but rather just “targets”. But at a mere 5,000 feet there was no denying the horrors they were inflicting on the people below. Bombardier Maynard David <a href="https://ww2ondeadline.com/2021/03/29/world-war-ii-on-deadline-anniversary/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recalled</a>: “When the bomb bay doors opened, the plane filled with smoke from the ground and we smelled this horrible odor. We closed the bomb bay doors after we dropped and headed out to sea. The odor was still so strong in the plane the pilot ordered me to open the doors again to let the fresh air in. You could only imagine what was going on down below us.” The odor was the aroma of burning flesh. The sickeningly sweet smell permeated aircraft and uniforms for days after.
Two-and-a-half hours after the first B-29 appeared overhead, the last of the American “fire devils” plotted a southerly course over the ocean and headed back to base 1,200 miles away. Unfathomable scenes of horror were playing out in the blazing city behind them. But to a relieved LeMay, the mission had been a success beyond expectation.
In a single raid, the B-29 was vindicated and the entire trajectory of the war had been altered. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay had his template. No city in Japan was safe. And hence forward all of Dai Nippon, the land of the Rising Sun whose jackbooted conquerors had so recently lorded over the Western Pacific from China to Burma to New Guinea to the Aleutian Islands would suffer the wrath of his B-29s and their rain of fiery death from the sky.
Japan’s celebrated Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku is rumored to have uttered a chilling prognostication after his surprise attack on Pearl Harbor a little over three years before: “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve.” Whether he really said this or not, one doubts that even the imaginative Yamamoto, had he lived, could have envisioned just what a terrible resolve Curtis LeMay and his fleet of B-29s that would soon number over 1,000 Superfortresses at his disposal had in store for his people. America’s hellfire of retribution had begun.
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-1?row=0&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+1&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 1</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-1?row=0&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+1&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 3</a>

Firebombed Tokyo

Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 2

On November 15, 1941, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall gave a secret briefing to a small group of reporters to discuss the rising tensions between Washington D.C. and Tokyo. He was asked how the U.S. might prosecute a war against Japan if it should come to that. Marshall went off the record, and stated we would be merciless. American aircraft would be “dispatched to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians — it will be all out.”
Just three weeks later, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. found itself at war with the Japanese empire. With the exception of Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s celebrated, if mostly symbolic, April 1942 raid the enemy’s homeland remained safely out of range.
As the Americans began to press ever closer to Japan in a series of island hopping operations through the Central Pacific, however, it became clear that once the Marianas were captured this situation would change.
In 1943, out in the Utah desert on the Dugway Proving Ground, the Army Air Force constructed a 24-building replica of a Japanese city. There they ran a series of tests to determine how best to bomb a metropolitan area with wooden structures containing paper walls. Inside the imitation homes were pieces of imported Japanese furniture, tatami mats, and even clothes hung in the closets for authenticity. With forensic dispassion, they dropped various ordnances on the miniature city dubbed “Little Tokyo” to determine which was most effective.
<div id="attachment_887413" style="width: 810px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887413" class="size-full wp-image-887413" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway.jpg" alt="View of the German and Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, 1943. US ARMY, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons." width="800" height="215" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway.jpg 800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway-300x81.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway-768x206.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />View of the German and Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, 1943. US ARMY, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.</div>
The weapon chosen was the new M69 napalm bomb. It was a simple design. Weighing under seven pounds, it didn’t look like a typical bomb. Instead it was a hexagonal pipe just three inches in diameter and only 20 inches long and packed with cheesecloth bags loaded with napalm. The bomb trailed a three-foot streamer to slow its descent so it wouldn’t crash through a structure to the basement before igniting. Once the M69 pipe landed it lay inert for several seconds before shooting out the cheesecloth bags with a bang. Unimpeded, the bags could fly as far as a football field’s distance in any direction. If one should hit something in its path, like a wall, a ceiling, a car, a person even, the bag would burst like a water balloon, splattering a glob of flaming gel up to 50 feet, starting hundreds of intense mini fires. And they kept burning until the small fires eventually coalesced into an inferno, ravenously feasting on the ready fuel supply of Japanese wood and paper.
The destructive implications were disquieting. Potential civilian casualties would be on an order of magnitude never before seen. This at a time when firebombing Axis cities, like the RAF raid on Hamburg in July 1943 that killed 45,000 civilians, had already come into its own. By this stage in the war, however, with casualties mounting and Japan showing no inkling towards surrender, American hatred for the Japanese was so intense that personal scruples hardly entered into the calculation.
Meanwhile, the engineers at Boeing Aircraft had created an awesome delivery system to bring the war to Japan: The B-29 long range bomber. With a fuselage length of 99 feet and wingspan of 140 feet, the aptly named “Superfortress” was the largest, most technologically advanced mass-produced weapon of the Second World War. Driven by four 2,200 horsepower Wright R-3350 engines mounted on wing nacelles spinning four 16-foot 7-inch four-bladed propellers, and protected by remote-control gun turrets, the 60-ton wonder plane sped through the air at up to 350 mph at 30,000 feet. Pressurized compartments liberated the crews from the bulky flight suits and oxygen masks at altitude that were a necessity for the aviators on the B-29’s less advanced stablemates, the USAAF B-17 and B-24 and RAF Lancaster. Despite its size and weight, the Superfortress could hit targets 1,600 miles away with a 12,000 pound payload at altitude. The B-29 was to the other bombers in the Allied arsenal what the Cadillac DeVille was to the Model-T.
<div id="attachment_887453" style="width: 763px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887453" class="size-large wp-image-887453" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-753x576.jpg" alt="Bell-Marietta Georgia, B-29 Assembly Line - 1944. Serial numbers on the planes suggest these are Wichita-built Boeing B-29-5-BWs. United States Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons." width="753" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-753x576.jpg 753w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-300x230.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-768x588.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-1536x1175.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-2048x1567.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 753px) 100vw, 753px" />Bell-Marietta Georgia, B-29 Assembly Line &#8211; 1944. Serial numbers on the planes suggest these are Wichita-built Boeing B-29-5-BWs. U.S. Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.</div>
But having spent an unprecedented $3 billion in 1940s dollars designing, constructing ,and deploying the new leviathan bomber, U.S. planners feared they may have created the costliest flop in military history.
For all its promise and technological wonder, however, the B-29 was proving to be a disappointment. 
Flying first off of bases on mainland China and then, once captured, the Marianas, the B-29, would climb to its prescribed bombing altitude of 30,000 feet. Once there, the aircraft encountered the heretofore unheard of jet stream — a current of air that raced over Japan like an angry “kaze”, or wind, at 250 mph. When flying perpendicular to it, the bombers skidded wildly off course. If flying directly into it, real ground speed was reduced to a crawl, making the bombers easy targets for anti-aircraft. And if the kaze was in their six, the bombers raced headlong over their targets at speeds in excess of 450mph which was far too fast for accurate bombing. The results were negligible, and each time a B-29 was shot down, $600,000 worth of aircraft (in a time when a typical new house cost $3,100) and anywhere from ten to fourteen highly trained crewmen were lost. And, though greatly diminished by mid-1944, Japanese fighters still rose up to challenge the intruders over their cities.
In its first raid against Japan on June 15, 1944, for example, 60 China-based B-29s flying at 30,000 feet attempted to bomb a steel mill in Kyushu. Seven bombers were lost, while only one bomb hit the target. Something had to be done to salvage the B-29.
So the overall USAAF commander, Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold, reached over to the European Theater and summoned his most aggressive airman, Gen. Curtis LeMay, to take over the Pacific strategic bombing campaign from Gen. H.S. Hansell, who remained a stubborn disciple of high altitude precision bombing with high explosives. Arnold’s orders to LeMay were direct: get results or be fired too.
<div id="attachment_887389" style="width: 457px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887389" class="size-large wp-image-887389" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-447x576.jpg" alt="circa 1955: Studio portrait of United States Air Force Major General Curtis Emerson Le May wearing a military uniform, with medals over his left breast pocket. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="447" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-447x576.jpg 447w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-233x300.jpg 233w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-768x989.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623.jpg 795w" sizes="(max-width: 447px) 100vw, 447px" />circa 1955: Studio portrait of United States Air Force Major General Curtis Emerson Le May wearing a military uniform, with medals over his left breast pocket. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</div>
The cigar-chomping LeMay was known as a no-nonsense bomber ace who’d flown his share of combat missions over Germany, often piloting the lead plane into the flak and Luftwaffe-filled skies. He brought that same gritty determination to the Pacific.
At first, LeMay stayed true to daylight precision bombing dicta. But dropping high explosives on Tokyo from six miles up was proving ineffective. So on February 28, 1945, LeMay did something unorthodox. He sent his bombers high over Tokyo again, but this time they carried 450 tons of incendiaries. The results were encouraging; one square mile of Tokyo was burned out and 28,000 buildings destroyed or damaged. The general wondered what a mass raid coming in low could do.
LeMay summoned his wing commanders to his Quonset hut on Guam to inform them he’d made a stunning, and some thought insane, decision. He would bring the B-29s down under the jet stream to an altitude of between 5,000 and 8,000 feet. To impede anti-aircraft they would go in under the cover of night and the bombers would be loaded to the gills with M69 napalm bombs. And as if this wasn’t radical enough, LeMay informed his flabbergasted crews “I’m going to send you in at 5,000 feet without any guns, gunners or ammunition.” Though stripping away the heavy .50 caliber machine guns and extra crewmen would enable each bomber to haul an additional 2,700 pounds of ordinance, each aircraft would now be defenseless.
LeMay’s fliers were horrified. In fact, they saw the mission briefing as tantamount to a madman reading out their collective death sentences. There was safety in altitude. Said one aviator, “A sort of cold fear gripped the crew. Many frankly did not expect to return from a raid over that city at an altitude of less than 10,000 feet.” This wasn’t hyperbole. LeMay’s own flak experts feared that as many as seven out of ten bombers could be lost.
But the calculating airman thought he’d spotted a hole in Japan’s air defenses between low-level small caliber and high-altitude larger caliber anti-aircraft fire in that five to ten thousand corridor. He also knew there were only two dedicated night fighter squadrons on Tokyo’s Honshu island.
Dangers aside, there was a moral aspect to the new mission code-named “Operation Meetinghouse.” The specific target selected was a three-by-four-mile area that housed an estimated 750,000 people, many of them working as home-based shop laborers for the local war factories, which the planners figured made the zone a legitimate military target. Still, LeMay had no delusions as to what he was asking of his young fliers, and he was coldly candid in his briefing. “No matter how you slice it, you’re going to kill an awful lot of civilians. Thousands and thousands. But if you don’t destroy Japanese industry we’ll have to invade Japan.” Every man knew the horrific casualties such a final Götterdämmerung on the home islands implied.
At 5:35 p.m. on Friday, March 9, 1945, the first of 324 B-29s, carrying a combined payload of three and a third million pounds of napalm, roared down the runways on three Marianas islands; first Guam, which was farthest from Japan, then forty minutes later lifting off from Saipan and Tinian. Once in the air, the bombers headed for Japan in three parallel streams stretching 400 miles across the darkening Pacific sky.
<div id="attachment_887371" style="width: 730px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887371" class="size-large wp-image-887371" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-720x576.jpg" alt="Two U.S. soldiers watching the takeoff of a B-29 bomber from the air base at Saipan, destination Tokyo. Saipan, 23rd November 1944 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)" width="720" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-720x576.jpg 720w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-300x240.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-768x614.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" />Two U.S. soldiers watching the takeoff of a B-29 bomber from the air base at Saipan, destination Tokyo. Saipan, 23rd November 1944 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)</div>
LeMay, being LeMay, had wanted to lead the mission himself as he was going all in, betting hundreds of expensive bombers, and the young lives of their crews, on an untested theory. But his knowledge of the atomic bomb made his capture too high a security risk, so he was compelled to stay behind on Guam and pace his control room while furiously chomping his cigar. For the first time in the war, Curtis LeMay could not sleep. “I’m sweating this one out,” he confessed. “A lot could go wrong.”
<div id="attachment_887463" style="width: 996px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887463" class="size-full wp-image-887463" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945.jpg" alt="" width="986" height="515" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945.jpg 986w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945-300x157.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945-768x401.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 986px) 100vw, 986px" />501st Bombardment Group B-29 takeoff Northwest Field Guam. U.S. Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</div>
1,500 miles farther north, Tokyo’s teeming inhabitants had no clue as to the holocaust heading their way. All they knew from Radio Tokyo was that tomorrow, March 10, was Army Day. There would be a big parade through the streets. After reading the latest news, Radio Tokyo offered final words of encouragement to stay strong in the face of mounting adversity. “It is always darkest before dawn,” said the announcer. Then he wished them a good night and signed off.
Shortly after the radio went silent, six-year-old Suzuki Kensuke heard the blare of air-raid sirens erupting across the city, mingling with the ominous hum of thousands of approaching radial engines echoing through the night sky. “They sounded like an advanced notice telling us death was on the way,” he recalled. Death was, in fact, already overhead.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
* * *
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-2?row=0&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+2&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 2</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-1?row=0&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+1&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 3</a>

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The U.S. Navy said on Thursday that a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was involved in a collision with a large cargo ship in the Mediterranean Sea this week.
&#8220;The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) was involved in a collision with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M at approximately 11:46 p.m. local time, Feb. 12, while operating in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea,&#8221; the U.S. Sixth Fleet said in a statement.
&#8220;The collision did not endanger the Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) as there are no reports of flooding or injuries,&#8221; the statement continued. &#8220;The propulsion plants are unaffected and in a safe and stable condition.&#8221;
Navy officials said they have launched an investigation into the incident and will release more information as it becomes available.
The USS Harry S. Truman, named after America&#8217;s 33rd president, was the eighth aircraft carrier built in the Nimitz class.
The aircraft carrier was built in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton and cost $4.5 billion — well over $10 billion today.
The U.S. Naval Institute <a href="https://news.usni.org/2025/02/13/breaking-uss-harry-s-truman-collides-with-merchant-vessel-in-mediterranean-sea">noted</a> that the ship deployed in September from Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia to the U.S. Central Command.
The report said in part:
<blockquote>Port Said, Egypt, is at the northern tip of the Suez Canal, where it meets with the Mediterranean Sea. The indications from the position of Truman was the carrier was returning to the Red Sea after a port visit to Souda Bay, Greece.
Based on AIS data, Besiktas-M had just transited the Suez Canal and was bound for the Black Sea port of Constanta, Romania. Besiktas-M, a bulk carrier, is more than 550 feet long with a deadweight of 53,000 tons. The ship’s owner and manager was not immediately clear.</blockquote>
The last time that a U.S. aircraft carrier collided with a merchant vessel was in 2004, when the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) collided with a small ship in the Persian Gulf, the report said.

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