WWII Trivia

[pilotyip]

Which month in WWII has the biggest draft call up number? Just finished a new book on George Marshall Army COS in WWII. It was June of 1945, 440,00 due to the manpower shortage for the invasion of Japan. This is kind of surprising since Germany had already been defeated. But this helps explain why my dad, who was a production tool and die guy building B-24 Bombers at Willow Run, lost his exemption and got drafted and was sent to Fort Lewis Washington to train for the invasion.

 

[scarface]

Makes sense. The Marine Corps combat capabilities would've been severely drained with the recent Iwo Jima campaign and the then ongoing battle for Okinawa thus necessitating a major need for replenishments in their ranks. The Army had been taking two theatre casualties for years and mainland Japan would've been the island campaign casualty rates times a bunch so there was an immediate need.

 

[inline]

70 years ago on the evening of March 9th over 320 B-29s departed from Saipan and Tinian and firebombed Tokyo. This mission was conducted at altitudes between 5000 and 9000 feet. Helped by a 15 kt wind on the ground it resulted in a firestorm that killed over 100 thousand. This raid has largely been overshadowed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki even though these individual missions resulted in less deaths than the Tokyo raid.