Operation Starvation was an American mining operation conducted in World War II by the Army Air Force, in which vital water routes and ports of Japan were mined by air in order to disrupt enemy shipping. link title The Japan campaign was a series of battles and engagements between Allied forces and Imperial Japanese forces during the Pacific campaign of World War II from around June, 1944 until September, 1945. ... There were many air raids on Japan by Allied aircraft during World War II. The Home Islands of the Empire of Japan were defended by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service. ... The Volcano and Ryūkyū Islands campaign was a series of battles and engagements between Allied forces and Imperial Japanese forces during the Pacific campaign of World War II from around January, 1945 until June, 1945. ... B-29 bombers were used to drop hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives onto Japanese cities during the war. ... Battle of Tokyo Bay Conflict World War II Date July 22-July 23, 1945 Place Tokyo Bay Result Decisive American victory {{Campaignbox Pacific Campaign }} The Battle of Tokyo Bay was a World War II anti-shipping raid in Tokyo Harbor on the night of July 22, 1945. ... Operation Downfall was the overall Allied plan for the invasion of Japan at the end of World War II. The operation was canceled when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet Unions declaration of war against Japan. ... The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter. ... Polish wz. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was a part of the U.S. Army during World War II. The direct precursor to the U.S. Air Force, the USAAF formally existed between 1941 and 1947. ...

The mission was begun at the insistence of Admiral Chester Nimitz who wanted his naval operations augmented by an extensive mining of Japan itself conducted by the air force. While General Henry H. Arnold felt this was strictly a naval priority, he assigned General Curtis LeMay to carry it out. Chester William Nimitz (February 24, 1885 – February 20, 1966) was the Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces for the United States and Allied forces during World War II. He was the United States leading authority on submarines, as well as Chief of the Navys Bureau of Navigation in 1939. ... Henry Harley Hap Arnold (June 25, 1886 – January 15, 1950) was an aviation pioneer and Chief of the United States Army Air Corps (from 1938), Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces (from 1941 until 1945) and the first and only General of the Air Force (in 1949). ... Curtis Emerson LeMay (November 15, 1906 – October 1, 1990) was a General in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of independent candidate George C. Wallace in 1968. ...

Instead of one group, LeMay assigned the entire 313th Bombardment Wing (four groups, about 160 planes) to the task, with orders to plant 2,000 mines in April 1945. Beginning on March 27, 1945, 1,000 mines with magnetic and acoustic triggers were initially dropped—followed up with many more, including models with water pressure triggers as well. For some other uses of the word group please see Group Group is a term used by different air forces for a unit of command. ... 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday. ...

Eventually most of the major ports and straits of Japan were repeatedly mined, severely disrupting Japanese logistics and troop movements for the remainder of the war with 35 of 47 essential convoy routes having to be abandoned. Operation Starvation sank more ship tonnage in the last six months of the war than the efforts of all other sources combined. The Twentieth Air Force flew 1,529 sorties and laid 12,135 mines in twenty-six fields on forty-six separate missions. Mining demanded only 5.7% of the XXI Bomber Command's total sorties, and only fifteen B-29s were lost in the effort. In return, mines sank or damaged 670 ships totaling more than 1,250,000 tons. Look up Logistics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Twentieth Air Force is a Numbered Air Force in Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). ... The Boeing B-29 Superfortress (Boeing Model 341/345) was a four-engine heavy bomber flown by the United States Army Air Force. ...

After the war, the commander of Japan's minesweeping operations noted that he thought this mining campaign could have directly led to the defeat of Japan on its own had it begun earlier. A minesweeper is a military ship designed to locate and destroy naval mines placed in the sea by enemies. ...

External links

• Mines Away!, by Major John S. Chilstrom, USAF, 1992 (PDF)