TOKYO RAID

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25211, 25 May 1945, Page 7

TOKYO RAID

HEAVIEST OF WAR 700,000 BOMBS FALL CONGESTED DISTRICT MANY WAR INDUSTRIES (Keoi. 7.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, May 23 Over 560 Super-Fortresses dropped 1600 tons of fire bombs on Tokyo during a raid lasting 106 minutes, says the United Press Guam correspon-j dent. It was the greatest attack I against Tokyo so far, equalling any attack on German war centres. The raid was mainly directed against the Shinagawa area, lying between the Tama River and the Emperor's Palace, it is a highly congested district and oontains many small industries producing machine tools, precision instruments • and the Shinagawa railway yards, which handle one-third of all the Japanese rail traffic. A Twentieth Air Force communique announced that a very large force of! Marianas-based Super-Fortresses made; an incendiary attack on Tokyo early today. The New York Times correspondent on Guam says the scene over Tokyo was brilliantly lighted by pathfinding SuperFortresses which preceded the attack by a few minutes, dropping 1001b oil bombs to mark the targets. Tokyo looked calm enough to 6000 young Americans riding in SuperFortresses. Then the bomb bays opened and about 700,000 incendiaries cascaded on Tokyo. Th-> first crews to return reported that they could see the sky aglow over Tokyo 200 miles away. The Tokyo radio reported that the Singaku Temple. symV<-| of Japanese chivalry, was reduced to cinders. The Domei news agency admitted that many fires were started, but claimed that they were all extinguished by dawn. It also claimed that-19 bombers were shot down. The Tokyo attack was the 2.Srd launched against the .Japanese capital and its environs since the Super-Fort-resses began their lone-range assaults with the 111 bomber raid from Saipan on Dec-ember 24 last year. It is estimated that since the incendiary bombing of Japanese centres started on February 2-5, 32 square miles of Tokyo and 28 square miles of other major cities have been destroyed.