Oil
was blowing back from the ailing engine onto the wing surface,
and a long the plume of black smoke trailed out far behind us.
In imminent danger of fire and explosion, we made an emergency
landing at Kern County Airport in Bakersfield, which luckily happened
to be in the immediate vicinity.
It
was not until 15 April that, after an engine change, we took the
air for destination Sacramento. Soon after takeoff, we encountered
problems with # 3 engine again. It would continue to haunt us
all the way - from Bakersfield to Sacramento and from Sacramento
to Hawaii to Kwajalein and finally to Saipan. We flew nearly the
breadth of the Pacific on only three engines. Ordered to leave
the aircraft at Saipan, we did so willingly, and proceeded on
down to Guam by military transport.
There
we joined our Group, and were reunited with Glade Loy, our flight
engineer, and Bob Sands, CFC gunner, both of whom had been lent
out to other crews for the trip over. They both had already been
up to Japan and were combat christened. We were fascinated by
their stirring tales of flak and fighters. It was saddening, though,
to lean that several of our buddies had already perished in the
skies over Japan, or in the hostile waters of the Pacific.
The
Tokyo mission on 25 May, our fifth, was one of the Crew 5's toughest
missions. Added to the peril of heavy flak and the profusion of
enemy fighters, we were beset with malfunctioning engine and bomb
bay doors that wouldn't close. In addition, the thermal currents
from the fiery holocaust tossed us around violently. A combination
of these problems made it impossible to maintain altitude. For
several frightening moments, bail out, over Tokyo seemed likely.
With the horrified consequences racing through our minds, the
following minutes seemed like eternity. Fortunately, we were able
to close the bomb bay doors manually. This lessened the drag on
the aircraft and even though we had one engine out and another
throttled back, we were able to maintain altitude.
This relieved one problem, but we weren't home safe yet, as we
made our withdrawal through intense flak we became framed atop
a pyramid of blinding searchlights. By violent maneuvering Spaulding
managed to escape the deadly beams.
We
had no more than slipped away from the deadly lights when one
of several "fire-balls, " with its 2,000-pound TNT warhead, came
after us with deadly intentions. Bob Spaulding succeeded in evading
it by ducking into a dense smoke and racing toward the sea.
The
acrid fumes of burning wood surged up from the raging fires below
and penetrated the cabins. Eyes and throats smarted painfully
and it became necessary to hook up the oxygen to relieve the coughing
and gagging.
To
add to our worries, the lethal thermal currents were bouncing
us around like a cork in the ocean. We would, without warning,
be thrown upward hundreds of feet as we entered a column of superheated
air. Then as we emerged, it seemed to as if the bottom fell out
of the airplane and we'd plunge downward uncontrollably. Spaulding
and Baldi had their hands full as they fought to keep the aircraft
from flipping over on its back, as had happened to other crews.
Thankfully, the roller coaster ride ended as withdrew from the
fiery arena and limped out to toward the sea.
Down
below a firestorm was raging out of control. This is a meteorological
phenomenon, which occurs when many fires join to heat the air
to as high as 1100 degrees. This tremendous heat creates a violent
updraft, which in turn sucks the fresh air into the center of
the fire. This suction causes a wind of fantastic velocity - a
roaring inferno.
The
toll in B-29 losses was among the heaviest yet suffered by the
21st Bomber Command. Twenty-six Superforts went down and at least
another eighty received some degree of damage. This amounted to
nearly twenty (20) percent of the striking force either destroyed
or damaged by the intense barrages of flak or the vicious attacks
of sixty Japanese fighters.
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