With a surface of 69 millions square miles, the Pacific Ocean covers nearly a third of the...

via John Currin - Google+ Public Posts https://plus.google.com/100179705036605636374/posts/fHst7D28xEX

Ivan Strydom originally shared:

With a surface of 69 millions square miles, the Pacific Ocean covers nearly a third of the Earth’s surface. During World War II, military operations in the Pacific were confronted with the problem of range. This was particularly true of aerial operations. Mainland Japan was bombed on 18 April 1942 by Doolittle and his raiders, but that was a one-time effort of mostly psychological value. All of the 16 aircraft involved were lost, and 11 of the 80 raiders were either killed or captured. After that, no bombing raids were flown against the Japanese Home Islands until the second half of 1944 when B-29 long-range bombers were used from bases in China and later the Marianas islands. These raids were unescorted as no fighter had the range to escort the bombers all the way to Japan and back.



The lack of escorts for the B-29s became a growing concern. One of the solution that was considered was to have fighter launched from aircraft carriers located closer to Japan join the bombing raid. Even so, no naval fighter had enough range. The only fighter which seemed suitable for this was the North American P-51 Mustang.

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