4000 Lb. Bombs! – Kawasaki Aircraft Plant – June 9, 1945

But details were subordinated to the concept as a whole: area bombing by radar from low altitude at night instead of daytime visual precision bombing from high altitude while flying in formation. There could hardly have been a more complete reversal. Such heterodoxy really was a shock.

It seemed a good way to resume delivery of the scrap iron that the U.S. had embargoed in 1940, which had sort of made inevitable the whole shooting match – shooting match being more than a figure of speech in this case. After dropping a load of those 4,000-pounders, we might have to make a new map, showing Honshu East and Honshu West.

We briefed at 1015. After we got down to the plane, everything was postponed an hour. We took off at 0237 (June 9) [6BG Mission 49 ]. Nos. 1 and 2 each backfired some in getting us off the ground, but they ran okay once we were in the air. We passed Iwo and climbed to altitude. My figures showed that we were going to reach the assembly point about 10 minutes early, so we circled around a bit in order to be right on time. It worked. Everyone arrived at much the same time. I thought it was the best assembly our Group had ever made. And the formation left there at just about the right time. Gee, a few more like that and the crews might get excused from some of those incessant training flights.

Passing over the northern coast of Shikoku, suddenly we spotted a big fat aircraft carrier sitting in a cove. Our immediate thought was, “Look out! It may be able to put up some very accurate flak.” Our next thought was that we wished we could drop out of the formation and bomb it. We thought we owed it to Billy Mitchell. And we had the perfect bomb load. If we had been carrying those dinky 100-pound globs of gelatin, we couldn’t have done much to it. But with these 4,000-pound jobbies, man, oh man, we could have splattered that thing from Shimonoseki to Kawasaki. We would have, too. Oh, was it ever tempting?

Somewhat uncharacteristically, we decided we had better maintain discipline, so we stayed in the formation. After all, a modicum of exemplary behavior was expected of someone going to Lead-Crew school. It was time we started practicing restraint and moderation because we didn’t have much experience with those virtues.

The carrier didn’t shoot at the formation, which rather surprised us. Actually, we didn’t see any activity on or around it at all, so maybe it was beached and abandoned. But it was a long way below us, so we really couldn’t tell.

The formation went on, flying at 16,000 feet, turned at the I.P., and started on the bomb run – without seeing any flak or any fighters. There were a lot of clouds, but there were holes in them, and we assumed that the lead crew was bombing visually.

NEVER BEFORE HAD WE FELT SUCH A SURGE UPWARDS WHEN A BOMB DROPPED BUT THEN NEVER BEFORE HAD WE UNSHACKLED TWO TONS AT ONCE.

Bomb bay doors open. Eyes on the lead crew. Suddenly the lead plane hopped straight up in the air as a bomb fell out. Then every other plane jumped too, flattening everyone in his seat for a second. The second bomb, another bounced upward. The third bomb, same thing. Never before had we felt such a surge upwards when a bomb dropped but then never before had we unshackled two tons at once.
About a minute later the plane received a jolt – three of them, thud, thud, thud. “Oh-oh, look out,” we said, “heavy flak!”

IT WAS THE BOMBS EXPLODING. THREE MILES BELOW AND YET THE CONCUSSION GAVE THE PLANE A NOTICEABLE BUMP.

That was everyone’s immediate Pavlovian reaction. But it wasn’t flak. It was the bombs exploding. Three miles below and yet the concussion gave the plane a noticeable bump. Unbelievable. Good gosh, we thought, if we felt that, imagine what had happened down below. There must have been nothing left of that plant but a hole in the ground. The concussion alone surely flattened everything for some distance around. We hoped we were permitted to carry those two-tonners more often.

The bombs had been released at 1052, right on schedule. We turned and lit out across Osaka Wan and out of the Inland Sea area between Honshu and Skikoku. We hadn’t seen a burst of flak or a fighter. We suspected that the Japs had thought we were heading for Kobe, which was only a few miles beyond Akashi, and were all set to plaster us there. But this time they were fooled.

Again we had trouble with bomb bay doors. The right door in the rear bay wouldn’t latch. There wasn’t much we could do about it right then, except pull some extra power and wait until we were away from the coast. After about 30 minutes, we depressurized, and Doland and Charlie both removed their parachutes and climbed into the rear bomb bay. That job wasn’t among their favorite pastimes, ranking only slightly ahead of doing tonsillectomies at the Lincoln Park Zoo’s reptile house. So, they weren’t about to dally in that less-than-charming spot; they got the door closed in short order. Meador had buddied us along until we got it fixed.

We knew we were going to run low on gas again, but we came on back – without stopping at Iwo.

We landed at 1744, taxied to our hardstand, cut engines, yelled out to LaChance that we hadn’t scratched his airplane this time, and wearily lowered ourselves to the ground.

In the meantime, we learned – to our surprise and chagrin – that our “fearless leader” had used a radar bomb drop at Akashi. Bee had seen the bombs hit, but couldn’t tell what it was they hit. Very funny – because all that really told us was that the bombs fell downward instead of upward, and somehow I think we might have guessed that.

ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, WE FOUND OUT THAT OUR GROUP’S BOMBS HAD LANDED ABOUT 3,000 FEET LONG – THAT IS, BEYOND THE TARGET.

On the following day, we found out that our Group’s bombs had landed about 3,000 feet long – that is, beyond the target. All of those beautiful big two-ton bombs. All of that effort. All of that well-executed assembly and timely arrival at the target. And probably all we did was smash the worker’s jinrikishas in the parking lot. Holy cow, if the workers couldn’t get home, they probably just stayed at work and doubled the plant’s production; wouldn’t that have been an ironic turn of events after such high expectations for those big bombs? Actually, we may have missed the parking lot too – after all, 3,000 feet is more than half a mile.
As a matter of fact, we did miss the parking lot. An examination of the recon pictures showed that we actually had plunked those two-tonners down in the middle of the town. Maybe, for that mission, a corner drug store should be painted on the nose of each plane. If we credited Japanese civilians with a normal learning curve, when an air raid siren sounded, presumably they ran to a nearby industrial plant and huddled against a wall. Demonstrably, that was the safest place, wasn’t it?

Damn, we should have gone after that carrier. See, discipline and restraint aren’t always such great virtues.

I may have missed a page in our bible, but overshooting a target by half a mile surely was not what the author, Alexander P. de Seversky, had in mind as the way for us to achieve the victory he promised. We hoped that the 8th and 15th Air Forces didn’t hear about this; we were embarrassed enough as it was.

In exaggerated form, it illustrated the problem of bombing by radar. It was great for area bombing, like the night incendiary raids, but it simply wasn’t good enough for the single-installation bombing. In our experience, though, this particular miss at Akashi was not typical, because it seemed that we usually could be fairly accurate as to distance – if there was good teamwork among the bombardier, radar operator, and navigator. However, the course (left or right instead of over or under) was much more of a problem. That was mostly because of the three-degree beam width on the APQ-13’s PPI (the radar scope).