When One B-29 Crew Survived 52 Flak Hits at 31,000 Feet — Japan Admitted Altitude Immunity

November twenty-fourth, nineteen forty-four. Thirty-one thousand feet above the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan. First Lieutenant James Thompson gripped the control yoke of his B-29 Superfortress, designated forty-two dash six-two-seven-three, as black puffs of antiaircraft fire erupted four thousand feet below his aircraft. The altimeter needle held steady. The oxygen flow indicator pulsed rhythmically in the instrument panel's dim red glow. Through the Plexiglas windscreen, eighty-seven other silver giants maintained formation, their contrails drawing chalk lines across the winter sky.
Thompson's bomber flew at an altitude where the air outside registered forty degrees below zero. Yet inside the pressurized forward compartment, he and his copilot breathed normally, their hands steady on the controls despite the thin atmosphere that surrounded them. Four thousand feet beneath their formation, Japanese Type eighty-eight seventy-five millimeter antiaircraft guns hurled shells upward, straining against the physical limitations of their maximum effective ceiling. The explosions detonated in frustrated clusters, their shrapnel dissipating harmlessly in the stratosphere below the American bombers.
This disparity represented more than a tactical advantage. It embodied an acknowledgment that Japanese military planners had spent the previous five months desperately trying to avoid. American bombers now operated in a realm where Japanese defenses could not reach them. The altitude itself had become a weapon more decisive than any bomb or bullet.
The mission designation was San Antonio One, the first strategic strike against Tokyo from the recently captured Mariana Islands, fifteen hundred miles to the south. Unlike the long, fuel-constrained missions from distant Chinese bases that had characterized earlier B-29 operations, these bombers could now strike Japan's heartland regularly and return safely. The technological foundation for this capability rested in the pressurization systems that allowed crews to function effectively at heights where Japanese interceptors gasped for oxygen and struggled to maintain controlled flight.
Thompson's aircraft carried ten crewmen, six tons of high-explosive bombs, and a defensive armament of twelve fifty-caliber machine guns controlled by an analog computer fire control system. But the bomber's most potent defensive asset was invisible, unmeasurable in specifications or tonnage. It was altitude. Thirty-one thousand feet of vertical separation between American aircraft and Japanese guns. Thirty-one thousand feet of air so thin that conventional fighters lost power, maneuverability, and the ability to sustain combat.
Behind Thompson, in the bomb bay and aft pressurized compartment, his crew prepared for the target approach. Bombardier Captain William Harrison adjusted the Norden bombsight, compensating for groundspeed and wind drift. Navigator Second Lieutenant Robert Chen verified their position against dead reckoning calculations and celestial fixes taken during the six-hour flight from Saipan. In the central fire control station, Sergeant Michael O'Brien monitored the defensive armament, ready to direct coordinated fire from multiple turrets against any Japanese fighters that managed to climb into engagement range.