The Beginning

A Japanese nightmare burst into harsh and thunderous reality. The mainland was attacked. The U.S.'s new and secret B-29 Superfortress bombers came up out of China last week and bombed a vital industrial target in the Empire's heartland.

Unlike the carrier-based Doolittle raid of two years ago, this was not to be a single strike at Japan. The long-range planes flew from bases that had been painfully carved out of the fields of western China by nearly 500,000 coolies. Except for one smaller shakedown operation, the attack was the first mounted by the new, world-ranging U.S. Twentieth Army Air Force. But it would not be the last, and Japan knew it.

Target: Yawata. For their opening blow the U.S. heavyweights flew more than 2,000 miles to drop a great weight of explosives on Yawata, "Japan's Pittsburgh," and the sprawling Imperial Iron & Steel Works, source of one-fifth of all Japanese war steel.

Close-mouthed U.S. communiques said the bombing had been "accurate and effective." Antiaircraft fire over the target was "moderate to intense." There was "some resistance" from enemy fighters. The number of planes in the attack was left blank; a communique said only a "sizable task force of B-29s." The cost of the attack was four aircraft: one knocked down by enemy flak over the target; one missing; two lost by accidents.

To the bare bones of the official announcements, U.S. newsmen added their accounts. Eight correspondents and three photographers flew on the raid, among them TIME'S Harry Zinder, whose B-29 crash-landed in a China battle zone on the return trip (see facing page).

For an experimental attack, with new planes, the show went off in good style. Planes went in singly; there were no formations. The operation was timed as a night strike, hitting shortly before midnight. No flares were used. Eight lead planes hit first, and the fires they set were admirable flare markers for the rest.

The Boss Stayed Home. The boss of this planning, Brigadier General Kenneth B. Wolfe, chief of the Twentieth Bomber Command, was forced to sweat the mission out on the ground.

In his place, the ranking officer aloft was Brigadier General La Verne G. Saunders, a rugged, black-browed, hairy-chested airman perversely nicknamed "Blondie." Onetime All-America tackle at West Point, Saunders is a veteran airman with a spectacular record in B-17 Flying Fortress operations around the South Pacific.

The China Problem. For this and for future raids, the worst problem for the B-29s now is not Japs but supply. All bombs, gas and technical equipment must be flown in over the "Hump" route from India. Planes bringing in gas use several times the amount of their payload, just to get it there; the B-29s have proved to be their own most efficient tank cars. How much they can haul, and how often they can crank up new raids, now rates a spot well up on the crowded list of things the Japs must worry about.

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