TUESDAY, 10 JULY 1945
ALEUTIAN ISLANDS (Eleventh Air Force): Four B-24s fly a search down the west coasts
of Paramushiru and Shimushu and
then radar-bomb Minami Zaki on Shimushu. One B-24 flies a radar-ferret
mission over the north Kurile Islands.
AAF PACIFIC OCEAN AREA (Seventh Air Force): During the night of 10/11 Jul, 1
B-24 from Okinawa bombs Karasehara Airfield, Japan; 43 other Okinawa-based B-24s
bomb Wan and Sateku Airfields on Kikaiga-shima; 50+ B-25s bomb
Wan Airfield and Saha-Saki on Nakano Shima, Ryukyu Islands, and Kurume, Kyushu.
HQ AAF (Twentieth Air Force): 102 P-51s, based on Iwo Jima attack Hashin, Nishinomiya,
Sano, and Tokushima, Japan mostly hitting airfields; 3 P-51s are lost.
Fourteenth Air Force: 14 B-25s bomb the town of Dong Anh and the railroad shops
at Phu Lang Thuong, French Indochina, and truck convoys moving through the Siang
Chiang Valley, China. In China, 22 P-51s and P-38s bomb warehouses at Wuchang,
hit railroad targets of opportunity near Yoyang, strafe 3 railroad stations
N of Chuanhsien, bomb buildings N of Kanchou, knock out a bridge approach south
of Chuting, damage a bridge near Hengyang, and hit targets of opportunity at
Weichow Island, Laohokow, China, and Tourane. The 71st Liaison
Squadron, Fourteenth AF, begins a movement from Piardoba to Kunming with UC-64s, L-1s, L-4s and L-5s.
WESTERN PACIFIC [Far East Air Force (FEAF)]: P-38s and P-51s support
ground action in the north Cagayan Valley and hit enemy pockets ast of Manila. On
Formosa, B-24s bomb Tainan Airfield, destroying several planes, and bomb warehouses
at Takao. Bad weather again prevents fighter sweep from Okinawa over Kyushu. B-24s hit the town of Muarakaman and Tabanio Airfield while
P-38s strafe numerous targets of opportunity in SE Borneo. B-24s bomb the warehouse
area at Donggala on Celebes Island. HQ 58th Fighter Group moves from Porac to Okinawa. Lost is F-5E 44-24485 (MIA).
USN: 10 July-15 August--Carrier Operations Against Japan--Task
Force 38 (Vice Admiral J. S. McCain), initially composed of 14 carriers and
augmented by one other later in the period, operated against the Japanese homeland
in a series of air strikes on airfields, war and merchant shipping, naval bases
and military installations from Kyushu in the south to Hokkaido in the north.
The force was a part of Third Fleet under Admiral W. F. Halsey, who was in
overall command. Operations were supported by a replenishment group and an
antisubmarine group, both with escort carriers in their complement, and were
supplemented (after 16 July) by operations of British Carrier Task Force 37
(Vice Admiral H. B. Rawlings, RN) of four carriers and screen. The attack began
with heavy air strikes on airfields in the Tokyo area (10 July) shifted
to airfields and shipping in the northern Honshu-Hokkaido area (14-15 July),
and returned to Tokyo targets (17 July) and naval shipping at Yokosuka (18
July), swept up the Sea to the Osaka and Nagoya (25 July), and then repeated the sweep (25, 28 and 30 July). After moving southward
(1 Aug.) to evade a typhoon, the force moved northward to clear the Hiroshima area for the atomic bomb drop and hit the Honshu-Hokkaido area (9-10 Aug). In this final carrier action of World War II, carrier aircraft
destroyed 1,223 enemy aircraft of which over 1,000 were on the ground, and
sank 23 war and 48 merchant ships totaling 285,000 tons.
