VII Fighter Command. Theater-made, screened on aircraft canvas.
Carrier and land-based air power defined the U.S. Pacific strategy in World War II. With each advance the Americans sought to achieve aerial supremacy, interdict Japanese maritime supply lines and isolate the battlefield. As the leapfrogging strategy proceeded, enemy garrisons were destroyed by air power and the islands either seized or bypassed. The targets of American air strength were largely tactical until B-29 Super – forts of the Twentieth Air Force began the final heavy bombing campaign against Japan’s industrial centers in 1944, operating from bases in China and the Marianas Islands, some 1,300 miles from Honshu. When Iwo Jima was secured in March 1945, it became a haven for damaged or low-on-fuel B-29s as well as a base for the escort fighters of VII Fighter Command.
For the D-model Mustangs it was 625 nautical or 718 statute miles to the coast of Honshu, due north of Iwo over a trackless expanse of the North Pacific totally lacking in alternative landing sites. Missions routinely lasted more than seven hours.
