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The first B-29 Bomber command in Asia was the XX just outside Calcutta, India. Their first significant action was part training mission for the new crews and part combat mission. The target was the Japanese railroad yards in Bangkok, Thailand. Of the 100 B-29's , each carrying 5 tons of high explosives, 98 made it safely off the ground. On route to target, the weather fouled and only 77 aircraft found their destination. Due to mechanical problems, navigational problems, and weather obscuring the target, only 18 bombs found their mark. The maiden flight for the XX had ended in almost complete failure. Only ten days later, the new superbomber made its first strike on Japan, the first of its kind since the Doolittle raid. The raid over Kyushu involving 47 B-29's was also largely ineffective but for the first time, Japan realized their home islands were in rage of American forces. Soon, with more flight hours for the inexperienced crews in the new heavy bombers though, Japan would begin to realize to industrial might of the U.S. As the missions began growing in size and intensity, they became more effective. An intensive campaign aimed at Japanese oil refining and industrial complexes followed.
When the U.S. took the Maranias and later Iwojima and Saipan, it had all of Japan within reach. On November first the photo reconnaissance B-29 "Tokyo Rose" with the XXI bomber command out of Maranias took off destined for Tokyo. The aircraft circled the city ominously for thirty minutes out of range of all Japanese anti-aircraft guns and fighters. Though it carried no bombs, the Japanese caught the first glimpse of the bomber that would bring their empire to its knees.
With the early missions of the B-29's over Japan aimed at pinpoint strikes, little overall damage was done to the Japanese industrial complex. By 1945 however, the U.S. opened an all out campaign aimed at burning Japan into submission. With much of the Japanese buildings made out of wood and even paper, the Army Airforce shifted its focus to large scale fire bombing missions. Flights consisting of hundreds of B-29's would head for Japan carrying a mixture of incendiaries and high explosives. The first large wave of the attack would drop incendiaries to set large ports of a given city on fire. The second wave would come by with high explosives to destroy the now present fire fighters and their equipment as they bottled the new blazes. These waves could be repeated over and over with great effectiveness. By the fourteenth of August, 1945, 602 major Japanese industrial complexes and military institutions had been destroyed. Inland shipping was impossible and nearly half the area of Japan's largest 66 cities had been destroyed. Of the cities themselves that had been designated as B-29 targets, 92% of their area had been leveled. In one raid on the chemical and textile manufacturing center of Toyoma, 173 B-29 Superfortresses obliterated 99.5% of the city. The superfortress was bringing the once German-dwarfing military-industrial industry to a halt.
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