Word: lemay
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...when 100 B-29s took off on the first 1,500-mile raid on Tokyo. (A coordinated carrier strike had been called off because of 1) the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea and 2) the alarm inspired by increasing Kamikaze attacks.) By January 1945, when Trouble-Shooter LeMay came out of China to take over the Marianas operations, three wings composed of about 300 B-29s were operating or being organized, and 14 missions had been flown. The China-based force was later transferred to the Marianas...
...LeMay found more planes and plenty of gasoline on Guam, Saipan and Tinian. He also found plenty of trouble...
...Driver. For more than a month after LeMay's arrival in the Marianas, B-29 bombing was reduced to a trickle. The tough new general set his pipe or cigar in the corner of his mouth and quietly gave the orders: get to work on maintenance, give the crews more training...
...pilots, navigators, bombardiers. At a lead crew school, selected men were trained intensively to ride the lead planes, take them in to the targets, give the signal for all planes in the formation to drop their bombs. New crews and re-educated crews trained together in practice runs on LeMay's bombing range: the bypassed island of Rota, 60 miles north of Guam...
Maintenance was LeMay's fetish ("you can't drop bombs from a grounded plane"). When he noticed the ground force overworked in one group, while another group's men were comparatively idle, he pooled all the maintenance forces within each wing. A crack pilot with an exceptional feel for mechanic's work, he set up a system of specially skilled roving workers, for speedier, better repairs...