East Wind Returns

by Grasso, William Peter

  The pilot lets her descend, trading altitude for speed, gambling he will not use up that narrow margin of air and touch the water. The crewmen in the mid compartment, looking out the large, blister-shaped windows just aft of the wings, swear they can see wakes on the moonlit surface of the sea trailing her four huge propellers. The pilot offers a silent prayer that all the blacked-out naval vessels in the area are observing the safety zone beyond the runway’s end, for he would not see them and cannot clear them if they lay in his path.

  After gaining a few more knots of speed, the pilot eases back on the control column. The nose rises, but the airspeed quickly bleeds off and she does not climb. The nose is gently put back down. More speed is garnered: 160 knots. This time the nose rises, the airspeed holds, and she begins a slow climb. The crew discharges a collective sigh of relief.

  After flying uneventfully for over four hours, the pilot of Number 82 is advised by his navigator they have arrived at the rendezvous point just southwest of Osaka. The big home island of Honshu sprawls below them, mostly shrouded in low clouds, its distant inland peaks jutting up as if floating on cotton. They orbit at 31,000 feet, awaiting the two recon ships, which arrive 25 and 30 minutes later, respectively--well past schedule--having taken extra time to reevaluate the four cities. Radio silence is broken briefly to convey the coded consensus: the best chance for visual bombing is at the primary target city, Hiroshima. All the alternates are currently obscured by cloud cover which is not likely to clear before Number 82 has burned so much fuel she cannot make it to Okinawa or Iwo Jima, the closest airfields that could accommodate a B-29. There is one further consideration: the B-29 crews have been informed that the airfields now occupied by the Americans on southern Kyushu are not suitable for their aircraft. You might land successfully, but you will never take off again. The runways are not long enough, assuming you could beg, barter, or steal some fuel. The choice makes itself: Number 82’s pilot heads for Hiroshima, about 200 miles to the west.

  They fly down the jagged coast delineating Honshu from the Iyo Sea. Approaching Hiroshima, it becomes apparent the favorable weather report might have been overly optimistic--the surface is obscured at least 50 percent by cloud cover. Aiming the drop visually might prove impossible; the bombardier cannot find the aiming point--a rail bridge in the center of the city--on their first pass.

  It is time once again to weigh options. To follow orders to the letter, the bomb had to be aimed visually, not by radar. If they could not visually acquire the aiming point, the mission should be aborted. To land, the bomb would have to be deactivated. The pilot tells the nuclear weapons specialist to be prepared for the possibility of deactivation once the aircraft descends and depressurizes before landing. Only then could the hatch to the unpressurized bomb bay be opened. The flight engineer nervously taps the fuel quantity gauges, but wishing is not making them read any higher. The pilot turns the aircraft, orbiting for another pass over the city.

  As the nuclear weapons specialist glumly opens his tool kit, he is dismayed by what he finds. There are supposed to be six deactivation plugs in the kit. He counts only five. If any of the plugs are not installed, the atomic bomb is not completely safe and would likely detonate as the high-explosive trigger cooked off in a post-crash fire.

  In a panic, he dumps his kit on the floor at the rear of the cockpit between the navigator’s table and the radio operator’s station. Still only five plugs.

  How the fuck could I have lost a plug! Did it fall out of the kit while I was still in the bomb bay? If it did, it will probably fall from the plane if the bomb bay doors are opened, that is if it didn’t drop inside the door structure. Either way, I’ll never see it again!

  Frantically, he presses his face and his flashlight to the small circular window in the pressure hatch leading to the darkened bomb bay, trying desperately to see if the green plug is there somewhere. He sees nothing but the big bomb hanging in its shackles. He repacks his tool kit in a frenzy, his mind reeling as he grapples for a quick salvation from this blunder of historic proportions. The other crewmembers, absorbed in their duties, are unaware of their collective plight.

  The bomber lines up for her second pass over the city. The bombardier, hunched over the bombsight in the plexiglass-paneled nose, spins knobs and dials, trying to get a view of the aiming point through the thickening mass of cloud. He announces again, “I ain’t got it.”

  As the aircraft is placed in yet another orbit, the pilot, flight engineer, and navigator discuss the deteriorating fuel situation. Every minute of extra flying they undertake diminishes their chances of getting to a safe landing field, and they have undertaken quite a few extra minutes so far. Now there is a new wrinkle: the flight engineer has only been able to transfer a small portion of the auxiliary fuel from the ballast tank in the aft bomb bay. For some unknown reason, the transfer to the main tanks has stopped, leaving almost 500 gallons of unusable fuel--3000 pounds of extra weight. Returning to the Marianas or even Iwo Jima is now out of the question. Okinawa is the only barely viable option remaining.

  Turning to the nuclear weapons specialist, the pilot asks his opinion. He recognizes the specialist’s agitated state right away but is not troubled: this man, who is a physicist by profession but a military officer only by circumstance, is obviously feeling the entire weight of the Manhattan Project on his shoulders at the moment.

  Most understandable…

  The pilot is not taken aback by the specialist’s shakily expressed answer, either, because he is thinking exactly the same thing: “Let’s go ahead and drop by radar. We’ll get it close enough.”

  On the third pass, the navigator intently peers into his radar display, observing the glowing outline of the terrain features below. He feeds target and wind information to the bombardier, who uses it to set the cloud-blind Norden bombsight. This method will be much more difficult: picking your aiming point among a field of indistinct, glowing blotches rather than looking directly at it through a telescopic sight did not promote accuracy. The whole process would become an approximation. Precision bombing, their stock in trade, would not happen this mission.

  Of course, with a bomb as powerful as the one their plane carried, how accurate did you really have to be? The aiming point had been selected due to its central location, so the blast effect would be greatest as it radiated out through the city in all directions. Would dropping a mile or so from the optimum aiming point make much difference?

  Probably not, the pilot tells himself.

  As Number 82 nears the center of Hiroshima for the third time, the navigator jerks his head back from the hooded radar scope, howling, “The fucking thing just quit! It’s spoking!”

  The radar technician sitting across the compartment does not need to be told. He can see the failure on his own scope and the radar unit’s gauges. The navigator is correct: the system is “spoking.” The magnetron--the electro-magnetic device producing the bursts of radio frequency energy that makes airborne radar feasible--is misfiring. This causes the bright symmetrical wedges resembling the spokes of a wheel that now clutter the screen, signaling the system’s failure. The radar technician can probably fix it. He is a resourceful type; that is why he was picked for this crew. He has a spare magnetron on board but to replace it in flight is tricky, and it would take 15 minutes, maybe more. The fuel gauges are screaming their rebuttal to this option.

  With all this going on--the flying in circles, the cloud cover gradually obscuring more of the surface, the agonizing over the fuel situation--neither the pilot nor the navigator are sure of their exact location anymore. They just know they are over the Iyo Sea somewhere south of Hiroshima. The co-pilot, who is actually flying the airplane while the pilot confers, is even less sure. His attempt to keep the same orbit track is approximate at best. That might be fine for dead reckoning navigation but it is not good enough for precision bombing.

  The pilot is used to success. His entire military career has been one long success story. He is desperate not
to fail at this mission. He can see the single star of a brigadier general perched on his shoulders very soon.

  He tells the radar technician to proceed with the repair.

  All they need right now is for some Jap fighters to show up and take a few shots at them. Number 82 has been stripped of all her defensive armament except the two tail guns to save weight. Luckily, no fighters are anywhere in sight. There are few left that could climb to this lofty altitude, anyway, and those that could tended not to pursue solitary B-29’s. It was not worth the gas. Attacking formations of bombers was much more efficient.

  Fifteen minutes pass, then 20, as the big bomber continues to fly her lazy, broad circles, consuming precious fuel and time. The two recon ships, orbiting several miles away, keep radio silence while wondering what the hell is going on? The radar technician has worked feverishly and is in the final stages of the repair. He signals the navigator, at his station across the rear of the cockpit, that he will be done in another minute or two. The pilot, looking back from his seat, nods in acknowledgement.

  The earth and water directly below are now almost completely obscured as clouds continue to roll in. The crew’s rough points of reference for visual navigation are only the inland peaks of Honshu to the north, those of Shikoku to the south, and the sun. They will not know how far they might have strayed from Hiroshima city center until the radar is up and running again.

  The repetitive orbiting is playing havoc on the navigator’s wind corrections. His last precise calculation was now over one-half hour old. Using that as a baseline, the bomber should have drifted east-northeast as it circled. They would now need to correct back to the south-southwest as it prepared for their fourth--and hopefully final--run at the target. The bomb, when dropped from this altitude, would drift in the same manner. The navigator comes up with a course adjustment. The pilot applies it.

  With a mechanical whirring noise, almost undistinguishable over the drone of the bomber’s engines, the radar scope comes back to life. The radar technician, pleased with himself, gives a thumbs up. The navigator presses his face against the scope’s hood once again.

  He is confused by what he sees. The distinctive shape of the Hiroshima waterfront--the bay, the channels, the docks--is somehow different. Almost the same, but not quite.

  “I’m not sure what I’ve got here, Colonel!” the navigator calls to the pilot without lifting his face from the hood.

  With a hand motion to the co-pilot that says your airplane, the pilot leaves his seat and walks the few steps aft to the navigator’s station. “Let’s have a look,” he says.

  “What makes you think that’s not the Hiroshima waterfront?” the pilot asks as he peers into the scope.

  “The water, the channels…they’re almost the right shape, sir…but not quite.”

  “I don’t know about that…it looks pretty good to me. We’re probably just getting a different echo because we’re approaching from a different direction this time. Once we turn north again, you’ll see,” the pilot says as he returns to his seat. He takes back control of the aircraft from the co-pilot.

  The navigator wishes he could believe that without reservation as he begins his plot once again. He wonders how many times the pilot has actually interpreted a radar display. Not many, he would bet. And is this thing even working right after the repair?

  The overwrought nuclear weapons specialist sits on the cockpit floor with his back to the aft bulkhead, praying that they would just drop the damn thing. He does not want to abort. He does not want to be known in the Navy or at Caltech as the guy who lost the plug. He does not want to die in a post-crash nuclear holocaust.

  After calling out the new course for the bomb run, the navigator keeps his face glued to the hood as the bomber turns north, now three miles from the release point according to his last calculation. The bombardier dials in the final bombsight data corrections.

  The pilot might be right. After the turn north, the radar echoes do look somewhat different, but the navigator still is not totally convinced he is seeing the designated target on the screen. But I’m pretty sure.

  Thirty seconds to bomb release. The pilot reminds the crew to put on the welder’s goggles each has been issued to protect their eyes from the flash of nuclear detonation. The bomb bay doors open.

  Twenty seconds…the navigator is still trying to reconcile what he is seeing against what he had expected to see.

  Ten seconds…the bombardier flips open the safety guard on the manual drop button.

  Five seconds…the bombardier raises his right hand, the ready signal…

  Bomb away.

  The pilot immediately puts Number 82 into a steep left bank to get as far as possible from the bomb’s blast in the roughly 40 seconds until detonation. Unable to see the horizon or his instruments clearly while wearing the welder’s goggles, however, he almost rolls her onto her back. Both pilot and co-pilot fling off their goggles in frustration.

  As the plane banks sharply, the missing deactivation plug rolls out from under the box-like base of the radio operator’s seat, where it had hidden all these hours, and comes to rest against the foot of the dumbstruck nuclear weapons specialist.

  The shock wave feels like heavy flak as it buffets Number 82, now almost six miles distant. Her crew would have taken the bump in stride but they are still sightless from the brilliant flash seconds earlier. Even those who have kept the welder’s goggles on cannot see for what seems an anxious eternity. The blindness only amplifies the stomach-wrenching gyrations of an airplane flown by blind men. As their collective eyesight returns a few moments later, they see the towering mushroom cloud--that column of hot air, dust, and debris that climbs into the sky until its peak cools and flattens--standing as a supernatural monument to what they have just done. They are silent, calm--not a peaceful calm, but the kind that accompanies a sober reflection of personal responsibility that cannot be escaped or undone.

  Much too low on fuel, they head for Okinawa. They might not even make it there.

  The dazed citizens of Hiroshima wonder what has just taken place. After the strange and massive explosion to the southwest of the city, there came a shower of rain, then a shower of dust. A few waterfront buildings have been destroyed, some small craft swamped, and possibly a few hundred people have been swept away, drowned in the sea swell that engulfed the waterfront after the explosion. Some who had been outdoors stagger through the streets, still blinded by the flash brighter than the sun. Aside from those things, there appears to be no other damage.

  The mysterious flash and thunderous boom caused many rumors. The most prominent was an entire fleet of American fire-bombers had been destroyed in their entirety by the Kamikaze in one massive counterattack and had simultaneously exploded. In the past, Hiroshima had not received much attention from the Americans. Compared to what other cities had endured, whatever had just happened here seemed minor in comparison.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The human reaction to failure is variable. Sometimes we are ashamed, remorseful, and filled with the desire to retry and succeed. Sometimes we refuse to acknowledge failure as such, seeing only new opportunities. Sometimes we seek scapegoats. Sometimes we simply fill with rage.

  Harry Truman is currently in that last category. He stands behind his desk in the Oval Office like a coiled spring, leaning forward, palms on the blotter, in a room full of apprehensive men. General Marshall, the other joint chiefs, and cabinet members in attendance can sense he is about to blow. He has been standing like that, red-faced, since Marshal broke the news; it seems an hour ago, although it has only been a few seconds. Just one word--the wrong word--will send him into a full tirade.

  Secretary of State James Byrnes paces the other side of the room, deep in thought.

  Truman finally responds with all the civility he can muster. “General, describe exactly what the fuck you mean when you say the atom bomb drop was not as effective as we hoped.”

  “The effect on the city of Hiroshima wa
s minimal, Mister President. While the detonation occurred as expected, it appears the drop was off target by approximately four miles.”

  “Four fucking miles!” Truman says, turning to his Air Force chief. “General Arnold, is this what you consider ‘precision’ bombing? Two billion dollars in atomic bomb development gets dropped four miles off target?”

  Before Arnold can say anything, Admiral King jumps in. He cannot wait to get his shot in at the Air Force. “Once again, gentlemen, the myth of strategic bombing is exposed for the colossal waste of war-fighting resources it always has been, from Billy Mitchell to…”

  “THAT’S ENOUGH, ADMIRAL KING!” Truman says, having just heard that wrong word. The tirade is on. “I don’t have the time for your interservice rivalry bullshit! Now, General Arnold, what is it you were trying to say, goddammit?”

  Hap Arnold knows he is doomed. Whatever he says now, he is already in the trap. No excuse, no mitigating circumstance will redeem him. He decides to just tell it straight.

  “They couldn’t get a good visual of the target, Mister President. Too much cloud cover. They used radar. They thought they had good target confirmation, but the image was misleading or misinterpreted. They were actually still offshore, over the Iyo Sea, southwest of Hiroshima. The radar image of the offshore islands must have resembled the Hiroshima waterfront to them. The drop was about four miles off target, beyond the high ground west of the city. That high ground shielded the city from the blast. Damage assessment photos show the city virtually intact. The Japs are claiming no significant casualties. They’re even saying they thwarted a major raid and destroyed all our bombers.”