Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs. In popular usage, any act in which an incendiary device is used to initiate a fire is often described as a "firebombing".

Mar 2, 2025 · Bombing of Tokyo, (March 9–10, 1945), firebombing raid (codenamed “Operation Meetinghouse”) by the United States on the capital of Japan during the final stages of World War II, often cited as one of the most destructive acts of war in history, more destructive than the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki.

[1] 16 square miles (41 km 2; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless. The U.S. mounted the Doolittle Raid, a small-scale air raid on Tokyo by carrier-based long-range bombers, in April 1942.

Nov 16, 2009 · On the night of March 9, 1945, U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of the next 48 hours. Almost 16 square ...

On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city. This attack was code-named Operation Meetinghouse by the USAAF and is known as the Tokyo Great Air Raid (東京大空襲, Tōkyō dai-kūshū) in Japan. [1] .

Dec 15, 2022 · At sunset on March 9, 1945, Major General Curtis E. LeMay watched the first of more than 300 bombers lift off from Guam’s crushed coral runway for a midnight strike on Tokyo some 1,500 miles to the north.

Mar 8, 2015 · Seventy years ago today, US forces firebombed Tokyo to force the Japanese to an early surrender in the dying months of World War II. The atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have dominated the retelling of WWII history, but as a single attack the bombing of Tokyo was more destructive.

Mar 7, 2020 · The horrors Nihei saw that night were the result of Operation Meetinghouse, the deadliest of a series of firebombing air raids on Tokyo by the United States Army Air Forces, between February and...

More than 100,000 people were killed in a single night 80 years ago on Monday in the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo, the Japanese capital. The attack, made with conventional bombs, destroyed downtown Tokyo and filled the streets with heaps of charred bodies.

Mar 9, 2015 · In the space of a few hours, they dropped 1,667 tons of napalm-filled incendiary bombs on the Japanese capital, killing more than 100,000 people in a single strike, and injuring several...