Happy Anniversary

One year ago six Japanese fighter pilots sighted their first 6-29 high over the Himalayas. They jumped the big ship, then broke off as its guns blinked. One of them went down; two others were damaged. The most formidable U.S. warplane had received its baptism of fire.

By last week Japan's own skies echoed to the roar of 6-29 motors. Airfields on Kyushu whence enemy planes have been attacking U.S. positions on Okinawa were furrowed by exploding bombs. Intent bombardiers sighted carefully and began an anniversary celebration that was to go on for three straight days of attack.

In one year the Superfortresses had come far. Operational losses, once admittedly as high as 5%, were now negligible. Small, ineffective raids, spaced about two weeks apart at first, had grown to 400-plane raids at two-day intervals. More than 60,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on Japan, almost twice the 37,000 tons U.S. and R.A.F. planes dropped on all Europe in 1942. New U.S. fire bombs have proved to be a white-hot success.

Intelligence officers estimated that 40% of Japan's plane production was gone, that 50% of metropolitan Tokyo, 20% of Kobe and Osaka, more than 10% of Nagoya had been burned out. 6-293 have destroyed 395 Jap planes in the air, racked up another 301 probables, smashed 106 on the ground.

The Japanese openly wince under the lash of the 6-293. Cried Radio Tokyo: "The enemy seems bent on using them to destroy utterly the Yamato race in a manner far greater in fury than any bombings our Axis partners in Europe experienced."

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