Operation Starvation was a naval mining operation conducted in World War II by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) to disrupt Japanese shipping.

Operation

The mission was initiated at the insistence of Admiral Chester Nimitz who wanted his naval operations augmented by an extensive mining of Japan conducted by the USAAF. While General Henry H. Arnold felt this was strictly a naval priority, he assigned General Curtis LeMay to carry it out.

LeMay assigned one group of about 160 aircraft of the 313th Bombardment Wing to the task, with orders to plant 2,000 mines in April 1945. The mining runs were made by individual B-29 Superfortresses at night at moderately low altitudes. Radar provided mine release information. In terms of damage per unit of cost, it surpassed strategic bombing and the United States submarine campaign. 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 1,533 sorties, with 1,384 mining the primary fields (90.3%) and 42 mining secondary fields (2.75%). They laid 12,135 mines (nearly 9,100 tons) in 26 fields on 46 separate missions. Mining demanded only 5.9% of the XXI Bomber Command's total successful sorties, and only 16 B-29s were lost in the effort (including three scrapped because of battle damage). In return, mines sank or damaged 670 ships totaling more than 1,250,000 tons.

See also

  • Air raids on Japan
  • Blockade of Germany (World War II)

References

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