08 June 2010
 
Super Fort

(B-29 formation enroute Tokyo from Saipan under attack by Japanese fighters, 1944)
 
There is a lot to talk about this morning, but I don’t have time to get to it all. I had a throw-down in the Big Pink lobby with one of the Board members about the smoking ban at the pool, and I think I may have intimidated him. I was pretty emotional, which I regret a bit since I prefer to keep my passions channeled.
 
It had been an interesting day, since it included meeting Bill McCullough, a feisty 85-year-old man who lives now in San Antonio, but who was a turret mechanic on B-29s assigned to the XXI Bomb Group on the island of Saipan when we were putting the Home Islands of Japan to the torch.
 
An old friend of mine know Bill, and recommended I get in touch and hear his stories, of which there are many, and not sepia-toned. They are quite vivid and full color. Bill is very much in the moment, which is good, since one of heroes of his tales is his cousin, Hal McCullough, who was the bombardier for Crew 17, one of the first in the squadron to bomb Tokyo, and consequently, one of the first to complete their 30-mission allotment against the enemy and go home.
 
The air campaign in the Pacific is dramatically different from the one I know from Uncle Dick’s stories of the 8th Air Force in Europe. The aircraft were different because of the scale of the conflict.
 

(Late production model B-17G. Photo by Ty Brown)
 
The Flying Fortress was perhaps the most famous bomber of the Allied Forces in World War Two, and was the workhorse of the European strategic bombing campaign. Dick flew it, but after D-Day, when his squadron transitioned from the B-24 to the more capable Fort. Between the two, he always said that, reputation aside, the Liberator was the one that would bring you home.
 
 

(B-24 Liberator)
 
Dick finished his 25 missions in Europe just as the B-29 was being introduced to the Pacific Air Forces. The aircraft was designed with the vast distances of the Pacific in mind. The unsinkable aircraft carrier of Britain permitted the 8th Air Force bomber streams to launch from East Anglia and be over occupied France in minutes.
 
In the Pacific, the available bases were tiny specks of coral scattered in the enormous ocean, or remote fields in China where fuel, supplies, and maintenance would be difficult to assemble.
 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt' had pledged to Chiang Kai Chek that a new super aircraft would go into action from Chinese bases by April 1944. It was the sort of political declaration that President Kennedy used to put Americans on the moon, but it also lays an impossible burden on designers, manufacturers and test pilots.
 
Dick would have liked what the Boeing magicians produced. The Superfortress was the biggest, fastest, highest-flying bombing machine of the war, and that meant more of its crews lived to see the end of it.  
 
The new Super Fort abounded with innovation. It was the first to use pressurized compartments, which meant the crew could move around in relative comfort, without having to wear oxygen masks and thick leather gear. They could operate new remote-controlled powered machine guns mounted in low-profile turrets.

(B-29 Central Fire Control Module. Courtesy Vintage Aircraft, Compton, CA)
 
Bill McCullough was one of the technicians who kept the guns calibrated and working properly, a function that endeared him to the combat crews. New radar and other equipment became available with constant improvements to the production runs.
 
There were normally eleven men on a B-29 crew; the pilot was called the Aircraft Commander and shared flying duties with a co-pilot; two dual-rated navigator-bombardiers could both alternate duties on long flights, or if injured; a flight engineer who was a graduate of an engineer college and the radio operator flew in the front section.
 
Two big bomb bays were in the middle with a tunnel over them connecting the radarman and gunners in their rear pressurized areas. The tail gunner was in a small area alone, but usually was in the central compartment with the CFC (central fire control).

(Caricature courtesy of Adrian Narducci through Vintage Aircraft)
 
The right and left gunners sat in Plexiglas blisters so they could check the engines, wings, and watch for enemy planes. All of the crew members attended special schools while training in the new bombers which had many “bugs” due to the rapid design and fielding of the plane, and the constantly evolving configuration of new engines and propellers.
 
This was an educated bunch of airmen. Almost all the officers in the nose section had attended college; in fact the pilots, until 1942, had to have two years of college to enter the aviation cadet program.
 
The Combat crews were supported by scores of well-trained machinists, technicians and maintenance personnel. That is where Bill McCullough comes in, and his cousin Lt. Harold F. McCullough, who is still alive, but edging into the realm of dreams.
 
Bill McCullough may be eighty-five today, but then he was a young sergeant in the Army Air Corps, and with hundreds of other young men on the island of Saipan in the Western Pacific, where the XXI Bomber Command was about to take the war to the streets of Tokyo, and lay waste to the cities of the home islands of Japan.
 
The opportunity to operate an airfield on Saipan came with a cost. About 22,000 Japanese civilians died in the struggle for the island, and almost the entire garrison of 30,000 Imperial Army troops on the island were killed. For the victors, it was the most costly fight yet in the Pacific war. 2,949 American kids were killed and 10,364 wounded, out of a landing force of 71,000.
 
If I have a chance to talk to Bill today we will learn a little more about how he got there, and some of the things he did when the entire country went to war.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Subscribe to the RSS feed!