Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb - Paperback

by James M. Scott (Author)

Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed.

Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: "If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals." James M. Scott reconstructs in granular detail that horrific night, and describes the development of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight "precision" bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing. Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first time commanders deliberately targeted civilians which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.

Drawing on first-person interviews with American pilots and bombardiers and Japanese survivors, air force archives, and oral histories never before published in English, Scott delivers a harrowing and gripping account, and his most important and compelling work to date.

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Praise for Targeted: Beirut by Jack Carr and James M. Scott

"Jack Carr has teamed up with Pulitzer Prize finalist and historian James M. Scott to produce a gripping non-fiction book on the horrors of the 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 servicemen."
-- John Stryker Meyer, MACV-SOG special operations Vietnam veteran and bestselling author of Across the Fence

"Hats off to Jack Carr and James Scott for a brilliantly written, analytically crisp, and deeply heartfelt rendition of a dark chapter in American military history."
-- Admiral James Stavridis, U.S. Navy (ret.), New York Times bestselling author of 2034 and Sea Power

"Jack Carr and James Scott have written a historical masterpiece."
-- Samuel Katz, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghost Warriors and No Shadows in the Desert

"Jack Carr and James M. Scott will reshape your understanding of the entire war on terror with this breathtaking book that foreshadows 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq."
-- Craig Whitlock, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Afghanistan Papers and Fat Leonard

"Carr and Scott kill it."
-- Brad Meltzer, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nazi Conspiracy

"Thank you, Jack Carr and James M. Scott."
-- Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The Lion's Gate

"Carr and Scott deliver on every page."
-- Elliot Ackerman, New York Times bestselling author of The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan

"Jack Carr, writing with James M. Scott, uses his masterful storytelling gift to deconstruct the time in a deeply personal, human and gripping fashion."
-- Douglas London, Career CIA Operations Officer, Middle East expert and author of The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence

"Carr and Scott take us straight back to a dreadful flashpoint in modern Middle Eastern history, showing us how it presaged so much of the geopolitical strife that would follow."
-- Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author Ghost Soldiers, On Desperate Ground, and The Wide Wide Sea

"Carr and Scott sharpen our understanding of the forces driving much of this drama and the effect is engrossing, making this book very hard to put down."
-- Doug Stanton, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Horse Soldiers and In Harm's Way

"A tour de force born from the partnership of two of our generation's most outstanding writers and historians: Jack Carr and James M. Scott."
-- John Bruning, author of Race of Aces and Indestructible

"A groundbreaking, utterly compulsive read."
-- Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of Against All Odds and The Liberator

"Meticulously researched and packed with startling new information and profound conclusions."
-- Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny