1945年5月11日上午7:05(東京時間),4架隸屬美國海軍第137巡邏轟炸中隊(VPB-137)的PV-1從菲律賓的克拉克機場(Clark Field)起飛,每架飛機攜帶了3枚250磅炸彈和8枚5吋火箭,他們的主要目標是位於嘉義的台拓化學工業嘉義工場。這4架飛機抵達嘉義後,向嘉義工場發射了全數32枚火箭中的31枚,同時以30和50機槍不斷掃射。上下兩張照片即是在這次攻擊行動中所拍攝。
At 07:05 (Tokyo time) of May 11, 1945, four PV-1 Ventura patrol planes of VPB-137 of the US Navy took off from Clark Field on Luzon. Each of the plane was armed with three 250-lb bombs and eight 5-inch rockets. After they reached the primary target, the Kagi butanol plant of Taiwan Development Chemical Industry Co., they fired 31 out of 32 rockets into the buildings while strafing on their way in. The photo above and the one below were both taken during the action.
仔細看B圖左上角的廠房,可以發現屋頂早已毀於之前的美軍攻擊:
The roofs of the buildings on the upper-left corner of Photo B had been knocked out by previous attacks:
A、B兩張照片的拍攝角度如下(底圖是1945年6月美軍所攝的偵察照片):
Using the June 1944 vertical reconnaissance photo as a reference, I marked the areas covered by photos A and B with arrows. The area between each pair of arrows is the field of view of the corresponding photo.
從以下兩張照片的比較(點擊可放大),可以看到嘉義工場在美軍多次攻擊後殘破的景象。左圖攝於1945年1月,當時美軍尚未曾攻擊這座工廠;右圖攝於同年6月,再過兩個月,戰爭就結束了。
The following is the before-vs-after comparison (click to enlarge). The photo on the left was taken in January 1945, before the US military took actions against the plant. The right photo was taken in June 1945, two months before WWII ended.
同地點的現代衛星照片:
Modern satellite image of the same area: