Marines with automatic rifles directed traffic as the trucks hauled us to our new home. Although the marines had secured the island five months earlier, fighting was still going on. There were seven hundred battle-seasoned and extremely annoyed Japanese soldiers in the high country. The island was only twelve miles long and never more than five miles wide.
In May 1945, our bomber crew was selected to fly from Tinian to Iwo Jima where, with 9 other B-29s, we would act as navigational escorts for a maximum P-51 fighter assault on the Japanese mainland. The mission was not a happy one, nor am I proud to have been a part of it.
I flew only one combat mission to the Japanese Empire. You will note I said TO the Empire - THAT mission was terminated shortly after our bombs were dropped on a flaming fire-bombed target in Kawasaki the night of April 15, 1945
During the low level nighttime firebombing raid over Osaka on March 13, 1945, a Japanese military arsenal violently exploded hurling a directly overhead B-29 upward 5000 feet, flipping it upside down and into a slow roll, high speed death dive to the ground.
The top secret atomic bombing mission of Hiroshima was even kept from the Search and Rescue teams for that mission. B-29 Flight Engineer Lawrence Stewart tells the fascinating story of his Search and Rescue assignment for the Hiroshima bombing and what he was told.
B-29 Flight engineer Lawrence Stewart reflects on his war experience and the path crews took to getting home from the Marianas.
The B-29 crew survived a massive Japanese fighter and flak attack that destroyed one engine and punctured their aircraft with some 100 flak and bullet holes.
Their B-29 was violently shaking and rapidly losing altitude from a damaged engine that had caught fire. The crew faced ditching in the middle of the Pacific.
4000 lb bombs were so huge B-29's could only carry three of them. The planes dramatically jumped upward on their release and about a minute later felt the concussion wave of the bomb's horrific explosion three miles below. The bombing raid on the Kawasaki Aircraft Plant in June 1945 with 4000 lb bombs proved ineffective because the B-29 formation was forced to bomb by radar, missing the aircraft plant by 3000 ft!
From the start of our training at Grand Island, Nebraska to our shake-down missions from Tinian, all operations were aimed at high altitude, precision bombing. Our B-29’s were designed for the same thing. Starting with the 58th Wing’s first raid on the Japanese homeland from China and continuing with the huge effort from the Marianas Islands, the high-altitude bombing strategy was a failure.
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