V-weapons vast majority aimed at London; 2,515 reached the city, killing 6,184 civilians and injuring 17,981. Croydon to the south, on the flight path of the V1s suffered severely taking 142 hits. V-2 rocket launching sites were set up by the Germans around The Hague in the Netherlands on 6 September 1944. The first was launched from here against London on 8 September 1944 and took an estimated 5 minutes to fly the 200 miles from the Hague to London where it struck at 6.43pm on 8 September on Chiswick causing thirteen casualties. As the V2 explosions came without warning, the
Bombing of Tokyo (10 March 1945) for firebombing raids against Japan began well before March 1945. In 1943 the USAAF tested the effectiveness of incendiary bombs on the adjoining German and Japanese-style domestic set-piece building complexes at the Dugway Proving Ground. These trials demonstrated that M69 incendiaries were particularly effective at starting uncontrollable fires. These weapons were dropped from B-29s in clusters, and used napalm as their incendiary filler. After the bomb struck the ground, a fuse ignited a charge which first sprayed napalm from the weapon, and then ignited it. Prior to March 1945, stockpiles of incendiary bombs were built up in the Mariana Islands.