On the night of 9 to 10 March 1945 American B-29 bombers of Curtis LeMay's command dropped incendiaries on Tokyo from low altitude, burning out about 16 square miles of the city and killing, by the official count, 83,793 people; later estimates run to 100,000 or more. Also on 10 March: Battle of Helsingborg, 1710.
Tokyo in flames
Early in 1945 Major General Curtis LeMay, commanding the B-29s of the XXI Bomber Command, changed the way they attacked Japan. From 9 March they were to strike the principal cities at night, from low altitude, with incendiaries instead of high explosives; flying low, each bomber could carry a much heavier load.1
The first B-29s took off from Guam at about half past five on the afternoon of 9 March. The Army Air Forces history counts 334 bombers that took off; from between about 5,000 and 9,000 feet they dropped their incendiaries on the most densely populated part of the city in the first hours of 10 March. Japanese defenses were caught by surprise, and fourteen B-29s were lost.2
About 16 square miles of Tokyo burned out: 15 by the Strategic Bombing Survey's count, 15.8 in the Army Air Forces official history. More than a million people were left homeless. How many died is given differently. The official Japanese toll quoted in the official history was 83,793 dead and 40,918 wounded; the Survey put all casualties of this attack at about 185,000; the National WWII Museum writes of an estimated 110,000 dead; and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government speaks of lives “said to number 100,000” lost in one night (our translation).3
Battle of Helsingborg
10 March 1710 · 316 years ago
Also on 10 March: Battle of Helsingborg, 1710
Danish sources date this battle to 10 March 1710; by the calendar then used in Sweden it was 28 February. After news came in 1709 that the Swedish army had been lost at Poltava, Denmark re-entered the war, and in November 1709 a Danish army landed at Råå, south of Helsingborg. For the Swedish defeat that opened the way, see our article on the Battle of Poltava.4
On 10 March a Swedish army under Magnus Stenbock attacked the Danes, who stood on the high ground just outside Helsingborg. The armies were of similar size: about 14,000 men each by Lex's count, 14,000 Danes and 15,300 Swedes by Claes Annerstedt's. The Danish commander-in-chief, Christian Detlev Reventlow, had fallen ill, and Jørgen Rantzau, who led in his place, was badly wounded at the head of a counterattack. The Danish cavalry broke and fled toward the town, and the battle ended in a Danish defeat.5
Lex counts nearly 4,700 Danes dead and wounded and nearly 2,700 prisoners, Annerstedt 5,000 and 2,600; on the Swedish side both come to about 2,900 dead and wounded. The rest of the Danish army shut itself in Helsingborg, killed large numbers of its horses rather than leave them to the Swedes, and was shipped back to Zealand; the town, the Danes' only foothold in Scania, was given up. Anna Maria Forssberg writes that Swedish military historians usually see the battle as beating back the Danes' last attempt to retake the Scanian provinces.6
