[Jet Jaguar]

Bump.

[hinckley buzzard]

LeMay required a straight-on bombing run to maximize the effectiveness of the top secret Norden bomb sight, which in the hands of a skilled bombardier made the B-17 into a precision bomber. In any case he knew that zigzagging by large heavy bombers to try to avoid nimble Messerschmidts and Focke-Wulfs was a fools errand which did nothing but mess up the accuracy of the bombing run.

He also bolstered the self-defense capabilities of our bomber groups and saved many lives by designing the famous Box Formation, which you can see in any documentary film or movie about the Air Corps.

The reason for the incendiary bombing of Tokyo was based on the fact that Tokyo was one huge decentralized cottage defense plant. Every highly flammable shack in town harbored some piece of equipment for making war materiel, from bullets to boots to bandages, infinitely too many to be targeted independently. How many Tokyo inhabitants were true civilians at all is a highly problematic semantic issue which detractors prefer to overlook.