Firebombing of Tokyo
To stop the Japanese war industry, Major-General Curtis Lemay thought of a radical new tactic. Sending B-29 Superfortresses at night and loaded with high explosive and new incendiary bombs to bomb cities in Japan. Requiring ideal conditions for the fire to spread, he chose March 9th to bomb Tokyo, the capital of Japan. The bombs and rapidly spreading fire resulted in a higher death toll than would be achieved later in the war from the Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As said by French reporter Robert Guillain, who was stuck in Japan,
They set to work at once sowing the sky with fire. Bursts of light flashed everywhere in the darkness like Christmas trees lifting their decorations of flame high into the night, then fell back to earth in whistling bouquets of jagged flame. Barely a quarter of an hour after the raid started, the fire, whipped by the wind, began to scythe its way through the density of that wooden city.
The bombs slowed the Japanese war industry heavily and allowed the Americans to win the war.