 At the first Quebec conference, Allied chiefs were planning new strategy. Expecting European victory in a year, the Allies now marshaled their forces against Japan. The President knew that distances had put a premium on long-range air power. To strike Japan, he had a new weapon. Roosevelt promised 200 B-29 Superforts by March 1944. Inside the Chateau Frontenac at the Joint Chiefs Conference, General Arnold proposed to pierce the inner zone of Japan's homeland with the unbuilt bombers from bases to be erected in China. It was a bold plan. At the time of the Quebec conference, we only had 11 Superforts. Haparno's motto was to become famous. He announced, the difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer. There were only seven months to keep the promise. It was a race with time. We aircraft workers came from all walks of life. A few of us had built planes in World War I. We were a part of the strength of America, now working for Boeing, Bell and Martin. Their factories had sprung up across the country, in Georgia, Kansas, Nebraska, in the state of Washington. Things had certainly changed. In 20 years, America's aviation industry had come of age. Unskilled workers became highly productive because the cranes and gigs and tools were so designed. Boeing engineers helped us make a new wing that could carry more weight faster and higher than any we'd ever built. In each plane, there were 55,000 numbered parts. Thousands of miles of wiring, a million rivets. From its transparent nose to its tail, this was a complicated machine. Nevertheless, the Air Force ordered the assemblies like pieces for a giant jigsaw puzzle. By December, only four months after the President's promise, we put together 35 superforces. Then, every hour of every day, identical miracles of modern machinery were brought together. We workers witnessed an inspiring sight. A welling of vision and reality. Of free men and their need for peace. Of national defense and American industry. Building the superfort with the climax of the history of man's conquest of the air. We had helped bring to reality the dreams of Billy Mitchell and Frank Arnold. The plans of Hap-Arnold and two-ey spots. Thus, a 99-foot-long aerial giant spreading 141-foot wings was born. By the end of January, 142 superforces were accepted. Three-quarters of America's promise and our pipelines were full. Here were 65 tons of fighting fury, the biggest, fastest and most powerful bomber in the world. Now our sons and brothers could take the B-29 to war. In sharp contrast, halfway around the world in China, the other half of the superfort miracle unfolded. Armies of laborers were building a network of airbases almost by hand. Lean sinewy Chinese, measuring their work by the remaining earth pyramids, wrote a magnificent chapter in the saga of the superfort, 2,000 years after their ancestors had built the Great Wall for the defense of China. Here were the same primitive methods, baskets and holes, muscles and goodwill, and wheelbarrows which squeaked to keep imaginary devils away. With the machinery of only their million hands, stone by stone was patiently set. A modern Chinese wall was taking shape. Under the direction of 26 American officers and enlisted men, and at a cost of $150 million, 1,000 men gangs, following their own flagmen, rolled out four great airbases. April 24th became a day for us in the 20th bomber command to remember. General Saunders and Colonel J. Karman led the B-29 parade into Chengtu. Nearly all the immense airfields were ready for business. They had been built in only three months. Here was our superfort. It had hopped the Atlantic, Africa and India. It flew from Kansas to China in a week. It didn't seem possible, but only a year and a half after the first experimental B-29 was flown, a fleet of American aerial dreadnoughts were arriving in China. Next stop, Japan. It was 130 superforts. Directed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of our long range and power, we were the first units of the 20th Air Force. The President's promise was being kept. With more superforts on the way, the runway builders never stopped. In China, a land of miracles, unskilled hands were pounding out a path to victory. 1500 miles to the east, other hands had forged a modern war machine. Feared for war since 1928, their production rolled on. Like the Germans, they believed their empire invulnerable. Since Pearl Harbor, steel capacity had doubled. One-third was hammered into ships, ships to exploit conquered lands, ships to support far-flung military forces. Though suffering from shipping sunk by the Allies, Japan maintained the world's third largest merchant fleet with continued launchings. Manchuria, connected by an efficient merchant marine, formed an industrial empire three times larger than Germany. Ground forces had expanded to five million fanatics, nearly four times their strength at the time of Pearl Harbor. As the conquerors of half a billion people, they had to be stopped. By June, our bases in China were working around the clock. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had ordered an attack gun Japan. How many bombers could be sent? Our answer was 50. Not enough. Get at least 70. The maximum effort was necessary. It would relieve enemy pressure in East China, without the invasion of Saipan, our future Pacific base. Our target was Yawata, Japan's heavily guarded Pittsburgh. Yawata, which made one-fifth of all Jap steel. General Wolfe was winning the big gamble. His idea to train our crews while we tested the experimental B-29 was putting both men in planes in combat six months sooner. We were doing the impossible. The ports become airborne. Almost the entire force ordered for this historic mission. Andy Saunders and his pilot Colonel Howard Engler. We followed them. We headed out high over the Yangtze River. We began the long hop across the Yellow Sea in the Japs. Jimmy Doolittle had said we'd be back. In the dropped bombs through clouds on Yawata, damage was done to the Kokura Arsenal. The punishment to the steel industry was not extensive, but the B-29 Blitz was underway. A global bomber and a global air force were in operation. The beginning of the end of the Japanese Empire was underscored in exploding bombs that reminded the Japs of Pearl Harbor. The growing systematic waves of destruction had started. From China and later from Saipan, the Allies were forging a huge nutcracker to crush the enemy. General Arnold's determined order, make him the biggest, gun him the heaviest, and fly him the farthest, was carried out. He warned the enemy, no part of the Japanese Empire is now out of our range. No war factory too remote to feel our bombs. The battle for Japan is now underway with full speed ahead.