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Категория: Английский язык
While the campaign for the Philippines was still in progress, U.S. forces were making great steps in the direct advance toward their final objective, the Japanese homeland. Aerial bombardment was the prerequisite of the projected invasion of Japan — which was to
begin, it was imagined, with landings on Kyushu, the southernmost of the major Japanese islands. With U.S. forces firmly established in the Mariana Islands, the steady long-range bombing of Japan by B-29s continued throughout the end of 1944 and into 1945. But they were still long way from Tokyo and started bombing near-lying regions.
Meanwhile, a new tactic had been found for the bombing of Japan from bases in the Pacific. Instead of high-altitude strikes in daylight, low-level strikes at night, using napalm firebombs, were tried, with startling success. The first, in the night of March 9, 1945, against Tokyo, destroyed about 25 per cent of the city's buildings (most of them built of wood and plaster), killed more than 80,000 people, and made 1,000,000 homeless.
