B-29 Superfortresses wing by snow-covered Mount Fuji.   Photo: Bettmann/Corbis (March 10, 1945) Tokyo was hit over a three-hour period by three bomber streams that dropped roughly 2,000 tons of incendiaries near the docklands and in the industrial heart of the Japanese capital. Tokyo immediately burst into flames. The combination of incendiaries, the way they were dropped, windy weather conditions and lack of coordinated firefighting on the ground resulted in a firestorm similar to what occurred two years previously in Hamburg, and only a month before in Dresden. Temperatures on the ground in Tokyo reached 1,800 degrees in some places. The human carnage was appalling; bomber crews coming in near … Continue reading Tony Long