Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [196]
Meanwhile, extraordinary doings were afoot in China. Half a million labourers laid B-29 runways with rock crushed and hauled to the sites by human sweat, then levelled by giant rollers, each dragged by five hundred men and women. Scores of coolies died in accidents. The airstrips never properly matched the bombers’ requirements. In April 1944, however, the first B-29 landed in China. By August, modest numbers were attacking Japan from the new fields. The logistics were amazing, and appalling. Each B-29 sortie required 20 tons of fuel, munitions and supplies. These were carried to the Chinese bases by B-29 transports, each of which burnt 28 tons of fuel to shift a 4.5-ton payload. The shuttle was soon taken over by C-109 aircraft, to spare the bombers. Flying the Hump airlift to Kunming was one of the most dangerous and unpopular missions of the war, involving a cumulative loss of 450 aircraft. Crew efficiency and morale were notoriously low. Airmen obliged to bail out found themselves in some of the wildest country in the world, populated by tribesmen who sometimes spared their lives, but invariably seized their possessions. One crew walked 250 miles in twenty-nine days before reaching friendly territory.
This Herculean effort enabled B-29s to attack Japan out of China, but at mortal risk and with negligible results. At that time it was not the enemy’s fighters and flak guns which posed the major threat to crews’ survival, but their own aircraft. In the words of their best-known commander, the B-29 “had as many bugs543 as the entomological department of the Smithsonian.” Hydraulics, electrics, gun turrets, and above all power plant proved appallingly fallible. The four Curtis Wright R-3350 engines were “a mechanic’s nightmare,” prone to burst into flames during flight. Magnesium parts were liable to burn and fuse, alloy components to fail. “The airplane always felt like it was straining every rivet to be up there when you had it over 25,000 feet,” recorded one flier, Jack Caldwell. Added to the B-29s’ problems were the inexperience and shortcomings of their crews. The USAAF acknowledged that the problems of training men to fly this “battleship of the skies” were “monumental.” On a typical raid on 19 August 1944, 71 aircraft set out for the Yawata steelworks, 61 by day, 10 by night. Five were destroyed by enemy action; 2 crashed before or during take-off; a further 8 were lost due to technical failures. Just 112 tons of bombs were delivered, for the loss of $7.5 million worth of aircraft, together with their precious crews.
Maj. Richard McGlinn and his crew of the 40th Bomb Group became unwilling protagonists in an extraordinary adventure. Flak damaged an engine just after their aircraft bombed. The flight engineer reported that they could not hope to reach base. They threw out everything loose and headed for Russia—America’s ally in the war against Germany, though still neutral in the conflict with Japan. With radar and navigational equipment malfunctioning, McGlinn’s aircraft became lost in clouds and darkness. They glimpsed below a city which they could not identify, flew northwards for a further forty minutes, then bailed out. All eleven Americans landed safely in tundra. They began to march north in three groups, each man carrying sidearm, survival manual and equipment. Mosquitoes plagued them in the swamps. Emergency rations were soon gone. They resorted to a diet of mushrooms, frogs, grouse, snails, mice, berries, leaves and moss.
One party, reaching a river, built a small raft. Its three strongest