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At 10:35 a.m. rasping Nanking sirens screeched the air raid warning. Japan's bombers had of course taken off from Shanghai, and 13 young Chinese airmen, each piloting a U. S.-built Curtiss-Hawk, whirred up and away into the northwest to meet the invaders. Just as the Chinese disappeared, the first Japanese air squadron came over from the opposite direction, the southeast, flying two miles up, a faintly buzzing swarm of about 40 grey ships in a dazzling blue sky. Faster than anyone could think three things happened. The Japanese power-dived upon Nanking, Chinese anti-aircraft guns on the hills around the capital opened up, and reserve Chinese pursuit fighters took the air, climbing to tear like clawing condors at the Japanese bombers' flanks. The Japanese wing leader signaled with a puff of smoke, all his following bombers let go their loads and zoomed upward to get away, but by a freak four Japanese craft were downed at the same instant, belched smoke and plunged earthward like meteors, streaming flames.
At 11:15 the second wave of Japanese came over, this time from the northwest, bombing the Drum Tower residential section of China's capital. In a total of four hours' bombing, wave on wave, Japanese airmen dropped everything from enormous 500-lb. explosive charges which destroyed whole blocks and rocked the earth, to small, incendiary bombs no bigger than hand grenades, which ignited everything they touched that could possibly be set afire.
Ambassador Johnson on his gunboat in the river had a front seat at the bombing of Nanking's railway station and its Hsiakwan slums along the Yangtze. There Chinese too young, too old, too poor, too sick or too ignorant to have left Nanking were slain in slews. Japanese bombs wrecked and ignited their miserable huts, blew them to bits, seared the living, cremated the dead. Instead of panic or disorder, the reaction of Nanking's wretched poor seemed to be either to cower bemused and trembling or to rush into the streets with yells, curses and fists madly shaken at Japan's war birds. So far as could be learned not a single Chinese of prominence or foreigner had been hurt in Nanking as the vultures swooped away. Laborers at once began filling up holes in the streets, rushed construction of more dugouts. Only a few Chinese government buildings had been damaged, none of importance destroyed, and an improvised earthen dugout at the U. S. Embassy had not been hit by anything, although a Chinese anti-aircraft shell had splintered around the gatehouse. "It's just as safe here as on the river," announced Ambassador Johnson moving his whole staff back into the U. S. Embassy—after which natives of Nanking again beamed at sight of the Stars and Stripes wherever shown, made no more insulting noises or gestures. After inspecting Nanking, military experts opined that unskillfully constructed dugouts which collapsed of themselves had killed about as many Chinese as any one squadron of Japanese bombers.