Date
|
Grp
Mission
|
Target
|
17
April
|
4th
|
Kanoya
Airfield - Kyushu (Day) |
18
April
|
5th
|
Kanoya
Airfield - Kyushu (Day) |
21
April
|
6th
|
Kanoya
Airfield - Kyushu (Day) |
22
April
|
7th
|
Kushira
Airfield - Kyushu (Day) |
26
April
|
9th
|
Kokubu
Airfield - Kyushu. (Day) |
27
April
|
10th
|
Kushira
Airfield - Kyushu. (Day) |
28
April
|
11th
|
Kushira
Airfield - Kyushu. (Day) |
29
April
|
12th
|
Kushira
Airfield - Kyushu. (Day) |
30
April
|
13th
|
Kushira
Airfield - Kyushu (Day) |
4
May
|
14th
|
Oita
Airfield - Kyushu (Day) |
5
May
|
15th
|
Saeki
Airfield - Kyushu. (Day) |
Following
the night strike at Kawasaki, the 39th Bomb Group, along with
other units of XXII Bomber Command, began the long series of
attacks on the southernmost Japanese home island of Kyushu.
In
order to carry on those neutralizing attacks, it was necessary,
for the time, to abandon the strategic plan to knock out systematically
the major industrial cities of Japan one by one. It was the
urgency of the situation at Okinawa that dictated the new bombing
policy of the Command.
Since
the beginning of the American invasion of Okinawa, the United
States Navy had been experiencing a great deal of trouble with
damaging attacks by enemy planes and suicide aircraft based
on Kyushu. The number of naval vessels thus hit was reaching
such proportions that something had to be done about it. In
this situation, the Navy called upon the XXII Bomber Command
for help and got it.
The
Superforts placed a series of more than a dozen airfields on
Kyushu, stretching all the way from Oita, Usa and Saeki on the
north around the eastern shore to Izumi under almost daily attack.
|
Grp
Mission #6 | Target: Kanoya
Time: 0804 | Altitude: 16050
31º22' - 130º50'N
Crew P-21
|
Air
Force Photo
Courtesy of Ben Hill, RG, P-22
Click on image to enlarge
|
Beginning
with a strike at Kanoya airfield on 17 April, the 39th Group
continued these raids until 5 May and flew a total of eleven
missions of this sort. During this period there was but one
break in the schedule of Kyushu airfield bombings. This break
came on 23-24 April when a GP strike was made on the Hitachi
Aircraft Factory, seventeen miles west of Tokyo.
The long list of Kyushu missions was grueling for everybody
concerned, but especially for the combat crews and
the maintenance personnel. Sometimes the 39th would send out
a maximum effort to target and on other occasions one or two
squadrons would go. In the latter event, it was more than likely
that before the first force had returned to base, the other
planes were on the way to another target. On one occasion Intelligence
was holding a debriefing on one end of the briefing room while
the other end was being used to brief crews on the next strike.
Except
for the orderliness of the proceedings, the whole affair might
have been called a rat race.
In
all, the Kyushu raids stacked up like this: Kanoya was hit three
times, Kokobu twice, Kushu four times, Saeki once and Oita once.
Opposition
varied a great deal. Sometimes the flak would actually be negligible
and the fighters scarce and then at other times the enemy would
put up a hot defense.
On the flight to Kokobu on 26 April, the only flak reported
by crews of the 39th were two bursts near Kanoya on the way
to the target and one burst just after bombs away. Seventeen
enemy aircrafts were seen airborne, but not one attack was made
on the bombers.
In
connection with this strike, the crews like to tell a story. Kokobu
was the training station for the Japanese suicide squadrons, the
so-called "Kamikaze." According to the Nips' propaganda, these
eager beavers wanted nothing better that to take to the air against
the B-29s and, by their much heralded "body crashing" tactics,
to ram the Superfortresses and then join their honorable ancestors
wherever they were. But this time the little dare-alls showed
just exactly how eager they were. It so happened that Kokobu was
socked in 10/10ths. There were seventeen enemy fighters in the
air - presumably some of the Kamikaze. But because of the cloud
coverage, their antics could not be seen from the ground and not
a one tried the well-known suicide system on our force. Maybe
these particular buck-toothed boys subscribed to the old system
saying that sometimes life just ain't worth living, but even at
that it's a hell of a sight better than dying.