Their
mission was to fire-bomb Yokahama and destroy the main
business district which lay along the waterfront. One
hundred and one P-51's accompany 454 B-29’s (from
the 58th, 73rd, 313th/314th Bomb Wings) on the mission,
which would see nine square miles of Yokahama razed
to the ground.
Herb Greer's entry reads:
May
29,1945, Honshu. Target: Yokahoma industrial
section and warehouses at the docks. Flak was
heavy and fires were thick. But we fooled them
today. We had P-5i escort and they sure raised
hell with the Jap Air Force. They were down shooting
the hell out of the Jap planes before they could
get off the ground. We saw one .Jap Zeke with
two P-5i’s after him. He started rolling
after one P-51 had made a pass at him, and a second
P-5i rolled after him and gave him a big burst
and the Jap never stopped rolling until he hit
the ground. We hit the target at 18,500 feet with
incendiary. Big fires were started in the Yokahama
dock warehouse and industrial area. We got two
flak holes while over the target. After we left
the target, we escorted ship P-46, Lt Grear, out
to sea. He had number 3 shot out over the target
and lost number 4 about i~o miles out; we stayed
with him, calling the super dumbos when he ditched.
The ship broke into three pieces, all we saw survive
were four men. We had to land at Iwo Jima to get
fuel and then returned to Guam. 18 hours in the
air and was I tired, the ASR (Air Sea Rescue)
had arrived when we left P-46. We learned later
seven were saved. |
59
+/- yrs later Herb recalls the mission:
This was an interesting mission as it
was the first time we had been escorted by fighters.
It was really good to see them attacking the lap planes
on the ground before they could even take offl They
prowled the docks and the waterfront, strafing the aircraft
before they knew what hit them. Any that did get airborne
were immediately attacked and brought down. Our boys
flew in pairs so that they could protect each other.
They would get on a lap Zeke and bound him until he
was down and then go hunting for another.
It was busy over the target and the
flak was all around us. The warehouses and industrial
areas were burning and the P-51‘s were doing their
job. It looked just like another day at the office when
all of a sudden we were hit. At first it sounded like
someone, or something had hit the side; it was far too
loud of a ‘thunk’ for a bird. We all knew
that this was shrapnel, and that we had been hit by
flak. The gunners quickly scanned for damage and reported
back. We had been hit, that was for sure; there were
several holes in the aircraft, but nothing serious had
been damaged or so it seemed for the present.
It was then that we saw one of our group
in serious trouble. Crippled, with four Japanese fighters
closing in on them, things didn’t look good.
The aircraft the crew saw was P-46;
they had run into heavy flak and their number three
engine had been hit hard, seconds later number four
engine was also hit as were the bomb bay doors just
as they were closing. The co-pilot’s throttle
cables were severed and direct hits on the radio room,
the vertical stabilizer and the fuel transfer system
had all but crippled it. Number three engine was feathered
and number four was losing oil. Their radio operator
had been hit by flak entering the aircraft from below.
They headed for open sea but shortly
after leaving land, number four engine was feathered
before it could seize up and this, along with the tremendous
drag due to the open bomb bay doors, meant they had
to make plans to ditch. All this with enemy fighters
on their tail.
In the event that an aircraft was in
trouble we were briefed that the deputy lead ship would
drop out of formation and protect it, escorting it to
safety. However, as Major Jones looked across he could
see that they had trouble of their own, and were engaged
with several Japanese fighters so were in no position
to help anyone else.
The P-51 ‘s could not protect
P-46 due to lack of fuel and had to follow the navigational
B-29 back to Iwo Jima, otherwise they would have had
to ditch in the ocean.
1st Lt. Edgar B. Grear, the Aircraft
Commander of the crippled bomber, was calling for help.
He needed the protection of our guns. At this point
we had to move fast. Major Jones called Holt, our bombardier,
and told him to pick a target that wasn’t burning
and put the bombs on it pronto and
let the Japs rot in hell. As soon as we dropped our
load we pulled out of formation and positioned ourselves
alongside P-46.
We had to lower our flaps, to stay with
her because “Slic Chic’ P-46, was struggling
to maintain the necessary air speed to fly. The lap
fighters had moved to the other side so we assumed a
position above and to the right rear where we could
protect the ship, and as they maneuvered around the
crippled ship so did we. They would seldom attack a
fully gunned B-29 with all four engines fully operational.
The amazing B-29 could out- maneuver a fighter and with
its state of the art gunnery systems, it would have
been like taking a knife to a gunfight, as far as the
fighters
were concerned.
The pilot called us and said he was
going to have to ditch. Major Jones urged the pilot
to try to make it another 100 miles, but he said he
didn’t think they would make it with both engines
on the right side lost. They were down to between 8,000
to 1 0,000 feet and struggling to maintain altitude
using only the two left engines. To add to the problem
their fuel transfer system was damaged to such an extent
that they were not able to transfer fuel to the operational
engines.
I contacted Iwo Jima and told them that
we were escorting an aircraft that was about to ditch
and relayed the aircraft’s coordinates. In doing
this I had to use the code of the day and challenge
the receiver and be challenged by them in return. All
normal procedures to ensure we were who we claimed to
be and they were as well. A short while after, the Slic
Chic went down and we circled to protect it until a
B-17 ‘dumbo’ showed up with a boat. The
boat, containing maps, food and water, a motor and a
first aid kit, was dropped. The maps revealed, for navigational
purposes, winds as well as currents and were made of
silk so that seawater would not destroy them. We circled
afrw more times and saw four men get into the boat and
thought that was all that survived. Later we discovered
that three more made it and were picked up by a submarine.
Had we not accompanied them and notified Iwo immediately,
the crew may have perished.
The crew of the Slic Chic as P-46 was
nicknamed, dumped as many loose items as possible overboard
before ditching; they opened all escape hatches and
made a beautiful landing with full flaps. However, the
plane broke into three pieces on impact and the nose
started to go under. The crew, sporting various injuries,
made for the life raft, but once on board they realized
that there were only seven of them. The B- 17 dropped
the boat about 60 yards upwind of them, but it took
them four hours to reach it through rough seas. There
was a note onboard telling them that a submarine was
110 miles away and coming for them. The boat had dry
clothes aboard which they immediately changed into.
They could have been forgiven for thinking
that their troubles were over. However, the ocean, in
the form of a twenty-foot wave, had other plans and
sent them all back into the water. Eventually everyone
managed to get back into the boat, but it was raining
hard and the waves were growing
in size. The men were continually thrown overboard all
night and in the words of one of them, “we don’t
expect to get through another hour... the sea is beating
us to death and we expect the boat to break up... everyone
is praying”
As Herb headed back to base, the next
several hours were traumatic for the seven people he
had helped. Howard Howes, the navigator, was thrown
twenty feet from the boat, but as the next wave brought
him back into reach he was grabbed by the hair and dragged
back on board.
The survivors were indiscriminately thrown from the
boat and on one occasion the radar officer, Ralph Hayenga,
went overboard and was hauled back by his broken arm.
Apparently he never flinched.
It was six hours before they spotted
the submarine heading toward them at full speed. Of
the eleven man crew only seven survived. They were one
of seven B-29’s lost on that mission. (Replacement
Crew 1 - Killpack Crew was another of the seven
B-29's lost).
After our detour, we were low on fuel
and headed for Iwo Jima. It took quite some time before
we could get refueled because at that time the underground
fueling system wasn’t in place. The fuel trucks
had plenty of B-29’s to service so we had to wait
our turn.