Mission to Tokyo: The American Airmen Who Took the War to the Heart of Japan - Tapa dura

"Dorr has an exceptional understanding of war from the perspective of the individual airman and is a skilled writer who captures this perspective very well. For the reader who wants an appreciation of what air warfare was like for individuals and crews and is willing to overlook factual misstatements, the book is well worth reading." - Air Power History

"Robert F. Dorr's Mission to Tokyo captures in rich detail what it waslike logistically and emotionally for the airmen who delivered that deadly ordnance and whose efforts helped hasten the war's end. Mission to Tokyo is a good story well told." - Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine

From Hell Hawks! author Robert Dorr, Mission to Tokyo takes the reader on a World War II strategic bombing mission from an airfield on the western Pacific island of Tinian to Tokyo and back. Told in the veterans’ words, Mission to Tokyo is a narrative of every aspect of longrange bombing, including pilots and other aircrew, groundcrew, and escort fighters that accompanied the heavy bombers on their perilous mission. The B-29 Superfortresses were flying at 28,000 feet, but the bombing wasn’t very accurate, so the planes were taken down to just 5,000 to 8,000 feet. Eliminating the long climb up saved fuel and allowed heavier bomb loads. The lower altitude increased accuracy, but also the danger of antiaircraft fire. As with Mission to Berlin (Spring 2011), Mission to Tokyo focuses on a specific mission from spring 1945 and provides a history of the strategic air war against Japan in alternating chapters.