Comment by Blackthorn

Few different points made in that episode, some relevant to this discussion some not and some I'm not remembering.

1) The B-29s had god-awful bombing accuracy in their original mission (high altitude level bombing) because of the as-of-yet-undiscovered jet stream over Japan. So when they flew too high and fast to be intercepted, they were basically useless when it came to doing damage.

2) This was already in the Kamikaze era of the war, and many B-29s were lost to that.

Anyway, I'm not going to rewatch the whole 45-minute long episode again. I found some stats that listed a total of 74 lost from fighters, but I'm hesitant to post because I can't dig up the original source (it 404s now). Will if you so desire. The number lost due to weather, mechanical failure, etc., dwarf the number lost to fighters by a huge factor but it does make the original quote here sound like some amount of propaganda bullshit.