By May 23, as we learned more about the mission, we knew it was to be something special [6BG Mission 43 ]. The target was southern Tokyo, right next to Kawasaki, which probably was the first or second most concentrated industrial area in Japan – and probably also had the most concentrated flak anywhere in Japan. Maybe the AA gunners up there didn’t have any first sergeants or lieutenant colonels because they certainly knew which side they were on – and it wasn’t ours.

We were to come at the target from the west. That was down-wind, which helped. But not much. It looked mighty ominous. I know I had some twinge of nervousness I hadn’t felt about any other recent mission. Others, I supposed, felt the same way – just a bit tense or apprehensive. There was, for example, less joking than usual as we made preparations. While getting ready, I wrote sort of a special letter home – just in case. I had never done that before.

Briefing was at 1430. We were going to carry 32 590-pound E-46 incendiary clusters and were to bomb by radar from 9,500 feet. That altitude sounded like an indecisive compromise – certainly not highlevel bombing, but also not as low as we were for the Blitz in March. Maybe Intelligence knew something we didn’t, but it might be a bad compromise – high enough for the heavy stuff to get a crack at us but low enough for automatic weapons fire to reach us too. Going by our experience to then, if I had been allowed to pick a bombing altitude, it would have been either 40,000 feet or 400 feet, which provides a good indication of how I felt about those middle levels.

We ate at 1700 and met the truck at 1800. We took off at 2016 on runway C. Maybe we were little nervous about planes cracking up on take-off, but we thought we saw a plane burning at the end of runway A or B. We weren’t sure because we didn’t get a good look, being rather busy ourselves, although we got off all right. Just beyond the runway we saw some fire in the water. It was reddish, which we thought was not the right color for bombs (regular incendiaries burned with a white flame), but there didn’t seem to be enough flotsam to be a plane either.

THE JAPS KNEW WELL AHEAD OF TIME THAT WE WERE COMING

The flight to Japan went routinely. Harton was with us again on this mission – monitoring Jap radar as usual. North of Iwo he told us he was getting returns from Haha Jima and Chichi Jima. So the Japs knew well ahead of time that we were coming, as I guess they always did. Soon their radar plots would reveal our flight track, and they would warn the city we seemed to be headed for – plus, presuming they had learned from the experience, Hamamatsu, Shizuouka, Tateyama, and all other towns and villages up and down the coast.

We made landfall at 0305 (May 24) at Omaesaki, which is a cape way down southwest of Mt. Fujiyama. From there we took a 40-degree course across Suruga Bay, which brought us inland just a little to the right of Fujiyama. Russ, and no doubt the others too, worried about Fuji because it was more than 12,000 feet high, and there we were flying along in the dark at 9,500 feet. I knew that the elevations given on our charts were not entirely reliable. Even so, we were in no danger where we were. I could see the relevant land features on the radar and knew that we were missing Fuji by a good enough margin. But I had to keep reassuring Russ:

“Where’s that mountain?”

“It’s about 15 miles ahead and to the left.”

“Are you sure it’s to the left?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Thirty seconds later: “Are you real sure we’re not flying into the side of that mountain?”

“Yes, Russ, I’m real sure.”

And twenty seconds after that: “It looks awfully black out here; are you positive there isn’t a mountain ahead?”

“Yes, Russ, I’m positive – because I can see the mountain on the radar and our left wing is going to miss it by at least six feet.” I didn’t actually say that. Even if I had thought of it then, I probably wouldn’t have said it, because it was no time for frivolity.

At 0325 over open country we made a radar-controlled turn to a course of 85 degrees, as briefed, using the radar reflection from Hachioji to gauge the turn. In no time we could see searchlights ahead. There was no more worrying about Fujiyama.

There were other things to worry about, and one of them was the radar, which chose that instant to stop functioning. We kept going down the axis of attack. That’s about all we could do. Charlie said he could see below us well enough to release the bombs with the bomb sight, so were okay.

We could see that already there were quite a few fires to our right and some to our left. Not so many directly ahead – but we intended to remedy that. We knew from what was said during briefing that we were in one of the early waves, so we could project that the hoped-for conflagration would be going before this raid was over.

SEARCHLIGHTS WERE MORE – MUCH MORE – OF A WORRY THAN OUR RADAR. THEY WERE ALL OVER THE PLACE – SEEMINGLY HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF THEM.

Searchlights were more – much more – of a worry than our radar. They were all over the place – seemingly hundreds and hundreds of them. Our earlier raids had cleared out a lot of spaces, and the Japs seemed to have filled them with lights. Supposedly, Japanese industrial production had suffered – so, where in the world did they get all those searchlights?

WE WERE HEADED RIGHT INTO THAT MASS OF LIGHTS – AND INTO RANGE FOR THE AA GUNS THAT WE KNEW WERE THERE TOO.

We were on the bomb run itself, with Charlie tracking the target in the bomb sight, when a number of lights – eight, as a guess – all got us in their beams at the same time. Wow! That’s bright. And frightening. We felt exposed. But we had to hold steady – it was the bomb run. Soon after the lights got us, Charlie opened the bomb bay doors. The interior of the bays suddenly was lighter than day. Now we felt completely naked.

With a ground speed of 255 mph, the bomb run wouldn’t last long, but those seconds were ticking off so very, very slowly. You just know – your prickly skin tells you – that you are so lit up that every gunner in southeastern Honshu has you in his sights.

THERE WAS NO ESCAPE. GETTING HIT NOW SEEMED INEVITABLE.

THIS IS IT, I thought. This is THE END. Right here! Right now! I really expected to feel the blast of an explosion any moment. Every brain cell was concentrated solely on one line of thought – which part of the plane was going to be hit first – and how soon – and what would I do when it happened. Not IF it happened, but WHEN. Any moment now!

Any moment now. Any moment now.

My mind refused to function except for one dire question: “When the plane breaks apart…what then?” I was unable to formulate thoughts about the prospects – or any coherent thoughts at all.

We had to hold straight and level in that cone of light for 20 or 30 seconds more, which seemed forever. But they didn’t get us before we got rid of that explosive in the bomb bays. At 0333, with the lights still on us, the bombs finally slid out of the bays.

Unconsciously, I had glanced back toward the bomb bays. What I saw was Jeff, sort of transfixed as he looked through the glass in the bomb bay access door. With the bomb bay doors open, we could see whatever was under the plane. It was an unbelievable Alice-in-Wonderland sight – or maybe, more accurately, something out of Dante. There were lights, lots of light: shafts of white light swinging through the air, pulsing crimson patches below, winking green lights suspended somewhere, intermittent flashes too brief to distinguish a color – like Armageddon at the fireworks factory.

ALL HELL WAS BREAKING LOOSE. WE WERE HIGH ENOUGH FOR THE HEAVY STUFF, AND THEY CERTAINLY WERE USING IT. IT WAS BANGING AND POPPING ALL AROUND US.

At our altitude too, all hell was breaking loose. As we had feared, we were high enough for the heavy stuff, and they certainly were using it. It was banging and popping all around us. We could also see automatic weapons fire, but mostly below us. It was the big shell bursts – those ugly black ones that were frighteningly close – that we wanted so desperately to get away from.

THE PLANE WAS BEING BOUNCED AROUND VIOLENTLY ONE WAY THEN ANOTHER, TOSSED UP ON ONE WING AND THEN UP ON THE OTHER.

The plane was being bounced around violently one way then another, tossed up on one wing and then up on the other. All I wanted to do was hang onto something – anything. My heart was pounding. What it was pumping was probably pure adrenalin.

They say a coward dies a thousand deaths. But I was already working on my third thousand. What a contrast to the near-cockiness we had on some missions – flying over the corporal of Sada Hisaki, for instance.

From the target, we were supposed to fly a course of 89 degrees – almost straight east – across Tokyo Bay and the Chiba Peninsula. But we didn’t go straight anything. We certainly tried not to. We turned, we twisted, we climbed, we dove, speeded up, we slowed down. And we turned, twisted, climbed, dove, speeded up, and slowed down some more. Actually, I guess we didn’t slow down – understandably – but that was about the only thing we didn’t do. Russ would have tried a chandelle if he had thought it would have helped. That plane was bobbing around like a cork going down the rapids – some of the bouncing being the result of our own evasive tactics, some resulting from thermals that varied in severity every hundred feet or so, and some being the buffeting of AA shells bursting near us.

IT SOUNDED AS THOUGH SOMEONE WERE THROWING HANDFULS OF GRAVEL ON A TIN ROOF.

But those menacing black bursts were with us all the way. We could hear the stuff pop and rattle. It sounded as though someone were throwing handfuls of gravel on a tin roof. It certainly seemed as though it hit us, but we had heard that before when nothing hit, so we weren’t sure.

AGAIN AND AGAIN THE BRIGHT LIGHTS HELD US. AGAIN AND AGAIN RED AND BLACK FLAK BURSTS ENVELOPED US.

Usually at night one doesn’t see the black puffs of shells from heavy guns, but we could see lots of them now – they were so close and, heavens knows, there was plenty of light to see anything. Normally, a flak burst is some distance away and, if you can see the smoke at all, it appears to drift to the rear. Not this time. The bursts flashed around us so close that the black smoke whisked back past us right outside the window. We were dodging around in the middle of dozens of those bursts. They were on all sides of us – there was not getting away from them. We kept full power and pressed on. Again and again the bright lights held us. Again and again red and black flak bursts enveloped us.

Any moment now. . . Any moment now . . .

Through it all was the sweetest sound you ever heard: four engines firing on all cylinders without missing a beat. At that moment, that ol’ Reamatroid was the best, most faithful friend we had in the world.

We were supposed to go up to 10,000 feet and then, by the time we reached the coast, 12,000 feet. But climbing might require giving up some speed. Russ said he didn’t want to climb yet. I said “okay.” Russ wasn’t going to climb whether I agreed or not; but, at that time, I would have agreed to anything that would help get us out of there. Surviving came first; we would think about such unimportant things as the prescribed flight altitude later – that is, if later came and we were still flying.

It seemed like hours before we got out of the lights and the concentration of flak. I didn’t have the radar to look at, but I figured that by then we must be across Tokyo Bay. At last, the mind could once again entertain hopes for escape – and survival. My pulse rate slowed to something around 200.

Whew! That was by far the worst flak barrage we had ever run through. And I do mean run – like a kid going past the town cemetery at night after seeing a Boris Karloff movie.

My first calm thought, after the tension and fear finally subsided, proved that things were back to normal – because, even before trying to figure out where we were, I was thinking about making up some time by going higher than planned – up over 20,000 feet. First things first, you know.

THE DREADED ROCKET BOMB – WAS BEHIND US. RUSS PUT THE PLANE THROUGH ALL THE EVASIVE MANEUVERS HE COULD.

But then voices crackled on the intercom – the gunners in the back were telling us that there was a ball-of-fire out at 5 o’clock, and anxiety rose to a peak all over again. The dreaded rocket bomb – was behind us, still over Tokyo Bay. Again Russ put the plane through all the evasive maneuvers he could. I double-checked my CFC box to be sure the settings were correct. The ball-of-fire was still out of our range when the guys in the back saw tracers streaming toward it – but they couldn’t see the B-29 firing them. The ball-of-fire seemed to draw closer and closer to the source of the tracers, and then there was a big explosion. We figured it hit the 29.

Right away the gunners spotted another ball-of-fire. They said it was a good distance behind us, still back in the target area, but coming our way fast. Then there was a flash and it seemed to spin in. Our guess was that it went down – shot down or blew up on its own – before it could hit a 29.

At long last we were off the coast. The gunners had turned off the gunnery system activation switch when one of them caught a glimpse of what might be a night fighter. You can bet that gunfire came back on awfully fast. But soon the moving shadow was gone and we were okay and on the way home. A bit of blood once again was mixed with the adrenalin in my arteries.

All along, from the time we got out of the lights, we watched Venus low in the east. It really was incredibly bright about then, and we didn’t want to mistake it for an enemy – as far as we knew, Venus was maintaining neutrality in this War.

We landed at 1013. And were we ever glad to be back – speaking of understatements.

THERE WERE FAIR-SIZED HOLES IN THE RUDDER AND IN ENGINE NO. 4 AND SMALL ONES ELSEWHERE.

A walk around the plane revealed six flak holes that could be seen from the ground. There were fair-sized holes in the rudder and in engine No. 4 and small ones elsewhere. One was in the radar room near Hudson and Harton. On the way back, Russ and Hig hadn’t been able to get full manifold pressure on No. 4; the hole in it explained that. But the holes hadn’t kept the ol” Reamatroid from doing her job. We knew she would do her best for us when we needed her most. But that poor engine out there was wounded.

Everyone on the crew would have volunteered to give blood – but that wasn’t what the Reamatroid needed. An oil transfusion perhaps, a few splints, maybe, but mostly a lot of skin grafts, plus an array of new internal “organs”. A Call the Smithsonian and reserve a little space – about 15,000 square feet will do – because this plane deserves dignified retirement in its old age – right alongside the Winnie Mae and the Spirit of St. Louis.

Interrogation was noisy, with several returning crews reporting simultaneously. Crewmen animatedly related what they had seen, and there was plenty to tell about. When crews described the horrors of the flak, it unquestionably was the worst part of the mission. Until they told about the threat from the balls-of-fire; then that was the worst. Unless they got to talking about night fighters; then that was the worst part.

IT WAS THE ROUGHEST MISSION THE CREWS HAD FLOWN, AND THERE WASN’T MUCH COMFORT IN THE REALIZATION THAT JAPANESE AIR-DEFENSES WERE GETTING TOUGHER.

It was the roughest mission the crews had flown, and there wasn’t much comfort in the realization that Japanese air-defenses were getting tougher. If the Empire was weakening after a few years of war and six months of pounding by B-29s, it was manifest in strange ways.

It was generally agreed that the flak was fired in a pattern called predicted concentration. That was the conclusion of those who thought they were flak experts, which was an expertise I didn’t ever want to acquire, at least not first-hand. Predicted concentration meant that a group of guns operated as a coordinated unit instead of each one aiming at an individual plane. With pre-determined settings, they fired in unison so as to saturate a designated block of air space. It was a good tactic. Certainly, we were ready to testify that it was effective. We hoped that they didn’t choose to do it again.

IT WAS CHILLING TO THINK OF BEING A WELL-LIT TARGET FOR FIGHTERS THAT STAYED OUT IN THE DARKNESS AND TOOK POT SHOTS AT YOU.

As far as our crew knew, no fighters had fired at us, but many crews reported attacks. It was the Japs’ greatest night-fighter effort to date. Some crews thought that the fighter attacks had been well-coordinated with searchlights. Smith, for instance, had quite a few shots put into his plane and his crew hardly saw the fighter at all. It was chilling to think of being a well-lit target for fighters that stayed out in the darkness and took pot shots at you.

We found out that the fire we had seen burning off the end of our runway when we were taking off – seemingly so very long ago now – was made just by bombs, despite the reddish color. Patterson’s electrical system had failed on take-off; so he had salvoed his bombs as soon as he got a bit of altitude. Startled a few fish, I suppose, but that’s all.

From general interrogation, I dutifully trudged over to navigator’s interrogation. While I was there, someone reported that Andy and T.K. hadn’t been heard – from yet. Oh my!

I quickly rejoined the other members of the crew. Despite all the talk of intense opposition, we weren’t prepared for such shocking news. T.K. was T. K. Catts, who had been Sams’s co-pilot, as Andy had been ours. Among our crew, very little was said. Words didn’t come, not even profanity, for words seemed so inadequately expressive. The way we looked at each other said more than words would have said anyway.

An hour had gone by. Two hours. We usually enjoyed eating after a mission, but not this time; when we finished about 1230, there still had been no report from them. It was the most subdued I had ever seen this crew. Some other crews had heard Andy give a distress message over VHF. They figured he probably had ditched, and I guess actually we were afraid he had – that or worse – although we wouldn’t admit it to ourselves. But it didn’t look good – two hours going by with no report seemed terribly, terribly ominous. Boynton and Schneider of the 24th Squadron hadn’t been heard from either.

Then a report came in that Andy was at Iwo, and we felt a lot better. Catts had also landed at Iwo and, as far as Operations knew, was all right. Andy had been flying Sams’s new plane – we heard that the plane was all shot up. Of course, we didn’t care about the plane – maybe especially since it was Sams’s – except that its condition was an indication of the crew’s travail.

SOME OF ANDY’S CREW HAD BAILED OUT OVER THE TARGET!

After a short time, we heard a more complete story. Some of Andy’s crew had bailed out over the target! Their plane had been hit by flak, which set engine No. 1 afire. It was burning and the wing was damaged. In the confusion, No. 2 got feathered, throwing the plane abruptly into a tight spiral down to the left. Andy immediately told his crew to stand by to bail out.

They were dropping fast, but Andy fought it all the way. He got No. 2 unfeathered. He wrestled with the plane until he finally had it under control. How he managed to raise that left wing with No. 1 producing drag instead of power and lift, I will never know. When he pulled out of the spin, they were at only 2,000 feet – right over the target area.

Then he discovered that all of the men in the back and F/0 Mitchell, the navigator, had bailed out. Apparently, they had misunderstood the order to “stand by” to bail out or something else said subsequently – and jumped. John Creek, the radio operator, would have gone too except that the bomb bay doors snapped shut just as he was ready to leap into the forward bay. But he did see Mitchell’s parachute open.

Andy hardly knew what to do next – understandably. He didn’t know exactly where he was, which way to head, whether to abandon the plane or try to fly it, whether to ditch while he still had some control and before it blew up, or whether to try to get as far away as possible – where, if he then had to ditch, Air-Sea-Rescue might never find them. And No. 1 was still burning. Right then, four more searchlights picked him up, whereupon the Japs below began hosing small arms fire at him. That wasn’t any one of the several alternatives he had in mind. He maneuvered as best he could and, still flying at low altitude, managed to get out of the lights and headed in a generally southerly direction.

And-still No. 1 kept burning. The possibility of explosion was ever-present.

Andy and Creek, who had returned to his position after the doors shut in his face, started giving distress calls. Creek was able to contact someone who told them where they were, more or less, and what heading to take to get to Iwo. Iwo was not right over the horizon; it was about 700 miles away. That was a long, long distance – and a lot farther than usual when every mile and every minute they were not sure of making even one more mile.

No. l kept burning about halfway to Iwo. They discovered later that the fire had burned to a point only about four inches from the gas tank when it finally went out.

“MAPLE TOWER, I’M COMING IN FOR AN EMERGENCY LANDING. I’M TURNING ON FINAL, AND I’M NOT GOING AROUND”

Iwo was having bad weather; it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Getting the crippled down was taking longer than usual, so there were planes circling all over waiting to get in. When Andy got there, he barged right in to the middle of the traffic, called the tower and said, “Maple Tower, I’m coming in for an emergency landing. I’m turning on final, and I’m NOT going around” And he meant it – he didn’t care if Hap Arnold himself was in the tower. Another plane ahead of him got out of the way and he landed. By the time he got on the ground, he told us later, engine No. 1 was actually drooping out there on the wing with its internal parts hanging out. He didn’t see how it had stayed attached to the plane at all.

It must have been five badly shaken men who climbed out of that plane. They could be thankful for Andy’s grit and skill.

They rode back to Tinian with someone, arriving about 1900. We talked to Andy for a few seconds; but he didn’t look good. Doc gave him something to put him to sleep.

We hoped that the crew members who jumped were picked up by military officials. We understood that one’s fate was uncertain at best if he fell into the hand of provincial police – or, worse yet, vengeful civilians. Those who bailed out, of course, included Costello and Lounsbury, who had been a part of our crew for two missions.

SCHNEIDER AND BOYNTON STILL HADN’T BEEN HEARD FROM AND WERE ASSUMED TO HAVE GONE DOWN OVER THE TARGET.

Schneider and Boynton still hadn’t been heard from and were assumed to have gone down over the target. According to the information available to us, 590 planes had been scheduled for the mission, of which 550 purportedly got to the target. The latest report at that time was that 18 were lost over the target – 20 planes lost counting those that ditched. The 73rd Wing lost seven; the 58th Wing, five, the 313th Wing, three (the 505th Group lost one, the 504th none, the Ninth didn’t go, having its special mining job to do, and the Sixth lost two). By deduction, I guess the 314th Wing lost three planes. ·

IN THE SIXTH, PARKS’S CO-PILOT WAS KILLED WHEN A 20-MM SHELL TORE INTO THE CABIN, BLOWING ONE OF HIS ARMS OFF. TWO GUNNERS ON MAKI’S CREW WERE KILLED.

In addition to that, there were many crews that made it to Iwo whose planes would never fly again, and there were a number of men killed or injured in planes that got back. In the Sixth, Parks’ co-pilot was killed when a 20-mm shell tore into the cabin, blowing one of his arms off. Two gunners on Maki’s crew were killed.

ANOTHER 29 MIRACULOUSLY MADE IT TO IWO AFTER HAVING BEEN RAMMED BETWEEN NO. 1 AND 2 BY A JAP FIGHTER.

One B-29 that landed at Iwo had hit another 29 – the other one going down; one whole side was caved in on the one that made it back. Another 29 miraculously made it to Iwo after having been rammed between No. 1 and 2 by a Jap fighter. The air worthiness of 29s could not be in doubt.

It was generally assumed that we were going back the next night.

We talked with Andy the next morning. He seemed so morose; I thought he was blaming himself for half of the crew having bailed out. Instead, he should have been thankful that he had been able to save the other half; but, of course, he hadn’t recovered enough to look at it that way. He said he didn’t want another crew. That was understandable. I was sympathetic, thinking that there’s no use crowding ones luck. We believed that the colonel would be pulling for him and would try to get him a ground job – for a month or so anyway.

He told us that he thought maybe he had completely used up the muscles of his right leg, as though, maybe, his leg was now empty inside. The damage to the plane had, among other things, frozen the trim tab controls so that they wouldn’t move. The pilots had to counter all of the left-wing drag manually, holding pressure on the rudder steadily for the entire distance to Iwo. A fraction of that time would have been enough to tire out one leg in normal circumstances.

Andy said he had been told that he might be recommended for a Silver Star. We thought he certainly deserved it – sticking with a crippled plane that was still on fire in a spin like that. Creek might get a medal too. It didn’t stir them much – they wanted their crew back together and alive, not medals.

Read B-29 Navigator Donald W Kearney’s Firebombing of Tokyo articles below for a first-person, in-cockpit narrative of these harrowing missions. Also read an excerpt from Sgt. Creek’s military memoirs Short Stories of World War II.

Firebombing of Tokyo – March 9, 1945
Most Devastating Bombing Raid in History

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Firebombing of Tokyo – May 23, 1945
First of Two Roughest B-29 Missions

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Firebombing of Tokyo – May 25, 1945
Finishing Tokyo

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Unfortunate Bail Out
by Sgt. John R Creek, 6th Bomb Group Radio Operator

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