XX Bomber Command

XX Bomber Command
Emblem of XX Bomber Command
Active	1943–1945
Country	United States
Branch	United States Army Air Forces
Role	Command and Control
Engagements	World War II American Campaign (1941–1942) Asiatic-Pacific Campaign (1944–1945)

The XX Bomber Command is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with Twentieth Air Force, based on Okinawa. It was inactivated on 16 July 1945.

The idea of basing the Superfortresses in China first surfaced at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943. While planners assessed this option, the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff, meeting in Quebec in August, authorized a central Pacific drive that included the seizure of the Marianas. Not only were the Marianas closer to Tokyo, but once in Allied hands they could be supplied and defended more easily than other sites. In September, Combined Chiefs of Staff planners concluded that B-29s in China would be plagued by logistical problems. However, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided in favor of the China bases because he was impatient to bomb Japan and wished to bolster the Chinese war effort. At the Sextant Conference in Cairo at the end of the year, he promised Chiang Kai-shek that the very heavy bombers would be coming to his country. General Arnold supported that decision as a temporary expedient, but still preferred strategic missions against Japan from the Marianas, once bases there were available.

Advance Army Air Forces echelons arrived in India in December 1943 to organize the building of airfields in India and China. Thousands of Indians labored to construct four permanent bases in eastern India around Kharagpur. Meanwhile, 1,000 miles to the northeast, across the Himalayan mountains, about 350,000 Chinese workers toiled to build four staging bases in western China near Chengtu. By April 1944, eight B-29 airfields were available in Asia.