The coupling of the B–29 with the development and deployment of incendiary “firesticks”, six-pound cylinders filled with napalm, or gelatinized gasoline, was a very serious development for the enemy, indeed. While few were willing to face up to the inevitable, the death and destruction brought by the B–29s would plunge the country into a feeling that it had never felt before in its thousand-year history, a mixture of desperation and quiet despair. [64]
Andy Doty, a 1943 graduate of Hudson Falls High, was tasked as a tailgunner on 21 combat missions in the B–29 in the skies over the vast Pacific in these raids on the Japanese home islands. Landing in Guam for the first time as part of an eleven-man crew, he recounted his first missions and the horrors of war as witnessed by a 21–year old kid from Hometown, USA.
Andy Doty
My earliest impressions of our new home were of jungle, rain and mud. We lived in tents surrounded by high rows of uprooted trees and got about on wooden walkways. After a few weeks we moved into newly constructed Quonset huts that were high and dry.
Not long after we arrived, the pilot and co-pilot went on a mission to Japan as observers. They were strangely noncommittal when they came back.
‘What was it like?’ I asked the lieutenant, our co-pilot, a day later.
‘It was interesting. Spectacular. You'll find out soon enough.’
The First Mission
Our turn came not long afterward. On March 30 we were alerted for our first raid. We made our way to the briefing tent that was filled with combat crews sprawled on rows of benches. At the front was a huge map. The Marianas were at the bottom. Iwo Jima was halfway up, and the Japanese homeland angled across the top, 1600 miles away.
A red string led from our base straight to Nagoya, on the main island of Honshu. It was to be a high altitude daylight mission against the Mitsubishi aircraft engine factory, one of the two largest engine plants in Japan. It was a heavily defended target that previous missions had failed to destroy. Briefing officers told us about the importance of the complex. We listened closely to reports about the weather, the location of enemy anti-aircraft batteries, the positions of rescue submarines and aircraft, the tactics of Japanese fighter planes, and other details. A chaplain concluded the session with a short prayer. We sat with heads bowed.
We gathered up our parachute harnesses, parachutes, inflatable ‘Mae West’ life preservers, survival vests, helmets, oxygen masks, hunting knives, sunglasses and other items, and climbed into a truck with benches along each side. There was little talk in the darkness as we rode to our hardstand.
Much to our disappointment, the new bomber we had flown to Guam had been taken away from us and assigned to a more veteran crew. We inherited an older plane, No. 43 92996, and unloaded in front of it. We climbed aboard to check our equipment and positions, then returned to sit on the pavement near the front landing gear, our backs against the big wheels.
A long hour later, it was time to go. We paired up to pull the big propeller blades down and through, twelve turns per blade, to make certain that no oil had accumulated in the lower cylinder heads. I climbed up the rear ladder and started the auxiliary generator.
‘Putt-putt started and on line,’ I reported.
‘Roger,’ the pilot, our captain, replied. The men up front closed the bomb bays and switched on the first engine. The propellers slowly began to turn. The engine coughed to life, spewed smoke, and settled into a steady roar. Three other engines followed in turn.
Into the Air
Few wartime scenes can be more dramatic than dozens of heavy bombers departing on a mission. I will never forget the sight. One at a time, on a precise schedule, the B–29s inched out of their paved revetments and fell into line, brakes screeching, high tails bobbing in the moonlight like some prehistoric monsters. Nose to tail, the bombers edged ahead in a slow parade to the head of the runway. The air was filled with noise and fumes.
The large flaps at the back edge of our wings were slowly extended as we moved ahead, adding a fifth more surface area to the bomber's narrow wings. The flaps allowed take offs and landings at lower speeds.
‘Left flap, twenty-five degrees,’ the waist gunner reported to the pilot. ‘Right flap, twenty-five degrees,’ the opposite waist gunner added.
A wooden control tower lay ahead, to the right of the runway. Red and green lights from the tower triggered a take-off every minute. When the green light flashed, the captain opened the engines to full power and stood on the brakes, holding us fast as the engines roared. He released the brakes, and we began lumbering down the long runway. It was a dangerous moment, with little margin of safety; the temperamental engines had to haul a thirty–five ton bomber, four tons of bombs, eight thousand gallons of gasoline, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and eleven men into the air.
We slowly picked up speed, engines roaring, wisps of vapor trailing from opened engine cowlings that reminded me of the laid back ears of a running dog. We seemed to hug the ground forever. The captain held the nose down to gain as much speed as possible, then eased us into the air. He touched the brakes briefly to stop the wheels from spinning once we were airborne.
The lieutenant quickly retracted the wheels into the inboard engine nacelles [housings] to rid ourselves of the air resistance. ‘Gear up,’ he said. We sagged over the rocky headlands at the end of the island, adding speed as we dropped. The captain ‘milked’ the flaps back into the wings as we sped on.
Seated in the tail, I watched the bombers behind us, the runway, the cliffs and the island disappear. We were on our way. After a time I test fired my guns, went back through the unpressurized section to turn off the ‘putt-putt’, and joined the others in the waist compartment for the long trip. We had left at three in the morning to reach our target seven hours later. That timing would give us several hours of daylight for our return to Guam after the bomb run.
Three and one half hours later we passed over Iwo Jima, a brown pork chop shaped island halfway to Japan. Marines had taken it from the Japanese only a few days earlier after a monumental battle. The island's new landing strip, built while the fighting still raged, already was a welcome haven for bombers in distress.
Although the B-29's top speed was 358 miles an hour, it actually was flown more slowly when loaded with bombs and gas, and when a long trip lay ahead. The average indicated airspeed was closer to 220 miles an hour, which meant that the crews had to spend more than fifteen and one half hours in the air on every mission. The trip from Guam to Japan and back covered some 3,200 miles.
Three hours after we passed over Iwo, the captain announced that he was starting the climb to our bombing altitude of 25,000 feet. I returned to the tail and settled in. Ahead of us a lead bomber, its nose wheel extended for identification, circled above a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Japan. Arriving B–29s cut across the wide circle to catch up to the leader and other bombers. We edged into a formation of twelve planes. Once we had assembled we joined 256 Superforts in a long bomber stream, headed for Nagoya.
B–29s over Mt. Fuji, 1945. USAAF.
The Bomb Run
The side windows of my tail compartment flared out slightly. I could crane my head around to see the wings and engines. Looking down, I saw the coast of Japan appear beneath a wing. The enemy territory appeared dark and foreboding. There was no turning back. We were being drawn inexorably toward a point high in the sky above Japan's second largest city.
My stomach was tight as we continued on and turned into our bomb run. We were flying in close formation, keeping each other company as we maximized our fire power and bombing pattern. One B–29 was just behind and below our plane, only yards away. I looked into the front cabin, where the bombardier, pilot and copilot were hunched tensely in their flak suits, oxygen masks and helmets.
I kept my guns angled straight up in the air, knowing that the men in the following bombers were frightened by friendly weapons pointed in their direction.
It was quiet in our bomber as we bore ahead i
n perfect weather. The first puffs of anti-aircraft fire began to appear. I strained to watch in every direction for enemy aircraft.
‘Twelve o'clock level,’ the lieutenant shouted, and the guns chattered up front. A Japanese fighter flashed through our formation, the pilot's head swiveling as he looked about. I fired as soon as I could without hitting any bombers behind us. Someone had hit him—I hadn't—and he bailed out. He drifted to earth far to the rear.
As we neared the target area, the anti-aircraft fire increased. Our introduction to the war was a sky filled with ugly black bursts of fire, each burst sending jagged bits of steel flying in all directions.
I tried to shrink my body into the smallest possible target. The deadly puffs contrasted with the long, almost beautiful white tentacles of phosphorous bombs that were dropped into our formation by a Japanese plane flying above us. It was a surrealistic scene. Several bursts walked silently in a line toward our plane, but stopped short. Out of range to our right, a twin engine Japanese fighter radioed our speed and altitude to the ground batteries.
I was struck by the unreality of it all, although nothing could be more real. Perhaps all warriors are somewhat traumatized by their situations. We were in the thick of it, five miles above Japan, and yet I was observing myself and our situation almost with detachment. The cool interior of my compartment, the gleaming bombers all about us, the clear air outside, the vicious bursts of flak, the masked and helmeted men huddled in the plane close behind, all seemed from another world.
We were suspended in time on a steady bomb run from which we could not deviate. Flak described as ‘intense and accurate’ crashed all about us. Finally our bombardier called out ‘bombs away’ and our plane surged upward, relieved of its burden. Looking around, I saw schools of fat, 500-pound bombs drop from the other bombers and begin their long slants to earth; looking down moments later, I could see explosions twinkling in the target area, much like strings of tiny Chinese firecrackers.
Our formation wheeled into a long turn to head back home. Off the coast, the individual bombers spread out to begin their solitary flights to Guam. The feeling of relief in our B–29 was palpable.
‘My,’ the left waist gunner said. ‘That was quite a party!’
‘Only thirty-four more to go,’ the radioman added. No one answered.
Post-strike photos showed ‘excellent’ results; the New York Times reported the next day that the target had been hit squarely by our bombs, resulting in the ‘virtually total destruction of the vast works.’ All but twenty four of the 140 buildings were destroyed, some 3,446,000 square feet of roof space.
The anti-aircraft fire was ‘the heaviest yet encountered,’ according to the reports of veteran crew members, and fighter opposition was severe. Five aircraft were lost and more than half the bombers were damaged by flak, but I did not see any Superforts go down.
‘Look what you did to my airplane!’ our ground crew chief said after we landed and returned to our revetment. He mounted a ladder to poke the end of a screwdriver into one of the small holes that had been created by bits of flak on the underside of our right wing.
‘Sorry about that,’ said the captain.
Perdition
If the bombing run over Nagoya seemed interminable, the next one seemed even longer. It came over Tokyo on April 13, during the second low level incendiary raid on that city.
Although our high altitude Nagoya mission had been successful, earlier precision bombing from that height had been largely ineffective because of the dense clouds and strong winds above Japan. Clear weather was found over the target only four to seven days a month. General Curtis LeMay, head of the 20th Air Force, concluded that individual B-29s, flying in at 5,000 to 8,000 feet at night, would be far more accurate than if they bombed from 25,000 to 30,000 feet. They could burn out large areas of the Japanese cities, ‘de-house’ the population and destroy the many cottage industries that supported the war effort.
Another major advantage was that the bombers would not have to make the long, demanding climb to high altitude that strained the engines and drank up fuel. Nor would they have to assemble in formation and jockey about on the way to the target. Consequently, they could carry twice the bomb load. Engine maintenance would be reduced, which would result in more bombers over the target.
LeMay's decision had dismayed the B–29 crews. The low level raids obviously were much closer to ground anti-aircraft and searchlight batteries, and left less room for crewmen to bail out if their plane was shot down. Many B–29s were seen to catch fire, explode, and plunge to earth. The incendiary raids against major cities were not welcomed by the airmen.
We took off late in the afternoon on a mission appropriately code named ‘Perdition’—hell, utter destruction, entire loss, ruin. Our target was the arsenal area of the city, six miles northwest of the Imperial Palace. It was a sector that contained housing and factories that made or stored machine guns, artillery, bombs, and other arms. An estimated 30,000 to 80,000 people lived in every square mile of that area.
Each of the 348 bombers carried between five and eight tons of incendiary bombs, depending upon the distance they had to fly. Guam was 125 miles south of Saipan, so our ground crew loaded fewer bombs and more fuel. Each of our main bombs contained a cluster of fifty–five smaller bombs filled with jellied gasoline; the big bombs opened at 5,000 feet to scatter the smaller ones. One bomber could create a flaming swath a half–mile wide and a mile and a half long.
The Death of the President
As we flew north that night, we heard on our headsets that President Roosevelt had died suddenly while vacationing in Georgia. The news shocked us, for we were fond of our president and respected his steady leadership. We buzzed about the development for a time, speculating about the little known vice president, Harry Truman, who now would move into the White House. We put the news behind us and concentrated again on the mission ahead.
Inferno
We arrived off the coast at midnight. Looking ahead, I could see the glow of the burning city. We had heard about the three hundred anti-aircraft guns awaiting us, and were fearful. The report was that bombers caught in the searchlight beams above the city often were goners.
‘This is it,’ someone said as we bore ahead.
‘Stay off the intercom,’ the captain ordered.
Once over the city, I looked down into an indescribable scene. Tokyo was an inferno. Block after block of buildings were aflame. The fire covered eleven square miles of the city, and smoke towered thousands of feet into the air. The smell of burning wood and other materials came through our open bomb bays. A violent up draft suddenly drove us hundreds of feet higher, pinning us to our seats. I could hardly lift my hand.
Searchlights swept the sky and tracer fire laced through the night. I strained to watch for other bombers and Japanese night fighters. A few thousand feet above us, and to the rear, I saw a silver bomber caught by the searchlight beams. It shone brightly in the night sky. Bombs began tumbling down from its open bays, shimmering in the light of the fires and the beams.
Suddenly a beam fastened on our own bomber, and it was quickly joined by others. It was bright enough inside my compartment to read a newspaper. I felt naked in the grip of the beams as we plunged wildly ahead, waiting for our load of bombs to be dropped. They finally fell free, and the captain nosed the plane down to gain speed.
‘Let's get the hell out of here!’ he said as he banked swiftly down and away. We were greatly relieved as we headed home. More than one hundred miles from the city, I could still see the red glow in the sky. Beneath that glow, thousands of people were dead or dying.
Some 2,100 tons of bombs fell on Tokyo that night. ‘B–29s Set Great Tokyo Fires; Explosions Heard 100 Miles,’ the Times reported afterward. A correspondent who flew in a 314th Wing bomber wrote:
‘A very large task force of B–29s swarmed over Tokyo, a minute apart, in the darkness early today with millions of pounds of incendiaries. From my vantage point in t
his battleship of the sky, it appeared that the Army Air Force had achieved its goal of wiping out the fire-able sections of the Japanese capital. The sight of the capital aflame would thrill any American, and it was especially exciting for me, making my first combat mission in the Pacific air theater.’
Seven bombers and seventy–seven men failed to return. Our crew had emerged shaken, but unscathed.
The 15th Mission
I wrote home to my parents before our fifteenth mission. ‘This should all be over pretty soon,’ I said. ‘The Japs can't keep it up. They're running out of gas.’
We took off for Osaka early in the morning of June 7. Our regular radar man was ill, and was replaced by a young radar officer. He was quiet on our flight north, a handsome fellow among strangers, intent on the green radar screen in his dark room.
We were fairly confident it would be an easy run, for we had seen few fighters in recent weeks and the anti-aircraft fire was growing weaker. The flight was even easier than we expected; all of Japan was blanketed by heavy clouds. We saw no land from the time we neared the coast until we left it. We bombed by radar and saw only a few bursts of flak well away from our bomber.
A hundred miles off the coast on our way home, we began to relax. I was still watching behind us when something caught my eye. Far to the rear, to my lower right, a twin engine fighter plane popped up above the clouds, and then dropped down. He was on the prowl, hoping to catch us by surprise.
‘Tail to crew,’ I called out. ‘A fighter just came out of the clouds at seven o'clock low and dropped back down. Get ready.’
It was an Irving, the name that had been given to a night fighter that was equipped with radar and heavy armament. I entered his wingspan into my gun sight and waited. The black plane suddenly emerged a few thousand yards to the rear, climbing rapidly at my lower left.
The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation From Hometown, USA-Volume I: Voices of the Pacific Theater Page 14