China-Burma-India

The allied strategic plan contemplated that the actual defeat of Japan would be accomplished by operations in the Pacific. In the meantime, however, it was essential to defend India and to assist China. We could not afford to make substantial forces available. Our contribution in the China-Burma-India theater was almost entirely air and logistic support. The geography of the theater was such that overland transportation was virtually impossible beyond the Indian bases. As a consequence, the air in the China- Burma-India theater was called upon, not only to give protection against and to fight down enemy air and disrupt Japanese shipping and rail transportation, but also to transport the men and supplies for all forces and provide much of the fire power even in ground operations.

Full superiority over Japanese air forces was gradually attained. British ground forces at Imphal which had been surrounded by an attacking Japanese force were supplied by Allied air. The Japanese force was in turn isolated by air attack and destroyed. The troops that liberated Burma were moved, supplied, and supported by air. Japanese logistics in Burma and China were disrupted. China was kept in the war.

Over 1,180,000 tons of supplies and equipment and 1,380,000 troops were transported by air. The air movement over the "hump" between India and China attained a peak rate of 71,000 tons in 1 month.

In the fall of 1943 it was decided to attack Japanese industrial targets in Manchuria and Kyushu with B-29s flying from advanced bases in China. When this decision was reached, Guam, Saipan and Tinian had not yet been captured, and no other bases were available sufficiently close for direct strikes at the Japanese "Inner Zone" industries. The principal bottleneck in air operation in China was the transportation from India by air of the necessary supplies, most of which were allocated to supplying Chinese ground forces. As a result, the B-29s had sufficient supplies for only a small number of strikes per month. Data secured by the Survey in Japan established that these strikes caused more severe damage to the Manchurian steel plants selected as targets than assessment of aerial photography had revealed. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it appears that the overall results achieved did not warrant the diversion of effort entailed and that the aviation gasoline and supplies used by the B-29s might have been more profitably allocated to an expansion of the tactical and antishipping operations of the Fourteenth Air Force in China. The necessary training and combat experience with B-29s provided by this operation might have been secured through attacks on "Outer Zone" targets, from bases more easily supplied. In November 1944, long-range bomber attacks from Guam, Saipan and Tinian were initiated. The B-29s based in China were transferred to these bases in April 1945.

By March 1945, prior to heavy direct air attack on the Japanese home islands, the Japanese air forces had been reduced to Kamikaze forces, her fleet had been sunk or immobilized, her merchant marine decimated, large portions of her ground forces isolated, and the strangulation of her economy well begun. What happened to each of these segments of Japan's vanishing war potential is analyzed in the following sections.